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How I Got My Education. 



WITH A FEW REMARKS ON I'M SLIGHTLY IN 
LOVE AS I PASS ON, 

By "The Special Agent." 




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Jas. p. Harbison & Co., Printers, 
Atlanta, Ga. 



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TO THE STUDENTS OF EMORY COLLEGE 

THIS LITTLE VOLUME 

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 

BY THE AUTHOR. 



Contents. 



Page. 
CHAPTER I. 

My Desire for an Education, Confronted witli Much 
Opposition X7 

CHAPTER n. 
My First Big Trip From Home 31 

CHAPTER III. 
Student, Teacher, Farmer and Agent 4(> 

CHAPTER IV. 
At College and On the Road 61 

CHAPTER V. 
My Trip to Virginia 75 

CHAPTER VI. 

On the Road 90 

CHAPTER VII. 

Lights and Shadows, or Contrasted Pictures ]08 

CHAPTER VITI. 
Finale 127 



Preface. 



At the request of many who have taken much in- 
terest in his education, strewing his otherwise thorny 
pathway with flowers, and not as a specimen of litera- 
ture, does the author send forth this little volume, 
hopins^ that by the suggestions contained therein, 
some struggling youth may find words of encourage- 
ment as he endeavors to honestly work his .way 
through college and secure, by his own efforts, an edu- 
cation. 

If it contains much that would seem ridiculous in 
the eyes of the refined, literary world, please remem 
ber that it is not a treatise on Morals, Science or Phi- 
losophy ; nor is it a specimen of the author's true 
character ; but merely a few pages from the book of 
Human Nature, as he picked them up by the wayside 
while pressing his journey along the busy thorough- 
fare of this bustling, battling world. 

The author has tried to give, as nearly as possible, 



viii Preface. 

the incidents as tliey occurred in his experience as an 
a^ent ; this hcini^ th(i means whicli lie employed to 
attain liis education. 

How few know the resources which lie within their 
reach, and still fewer are they who have the courage to 
utilize those they do discover ; and it is with a view of 
encouragement, and not to seem literary, that he 
liumbly sends this otherwise useless little volume on 
its mission of love. 

May it find its way into the hands of those only, 
who are in sympathy with the young men who, op- 
pressed with poverty, wish to make true men of them- 
selvee, and have first to acquire the wherewithal to se- 
cure sufficient mental training to insure success. 

Then you will be kind in judgment and charitable 
in criticism. Most truly yours, 

"Thk SrEciAi. Agent." 
Emory (Jollege, Oxford, Ga. 






CHAPTER I. 

MY DIOSJI'JO FOI{ AN KDHOATION (X)NFRONTED WITH 
MUCH ori'UBlTlON. 

" Well, Pauline, this is the last note 1 shall ever 
curry for Clareiico ; I have map^nificd his virtues, ex- 
onerated him from his accused errors, loved him 
for his couraf>;e, and especially for your sake; I have 
plead his cause before you with an honest heart ; but 
to-day T no longer carry a stick to break my own head. 
Hereafter the United States mail will bring his notes 
to you or they will lie unread. After this, the sweet- 
toned words from my lips will not be messages from 
him, but the |)lea(ling5 of my own cause, from a heart 
too full for utterance now, too deep to bo fathomed 
at a single glance." 

The youth set his bucket of water down under the 
June apple tree, gazed silently for a moment upon the 
unsyiripatlu^tic ground, and then dared to glance up 
into the sweetest face that he had ever beheld. 

Instead of receivirjg a rebuke in the shape of a 
frown, the maiden, with flushed cheek and sjjarkling 
eye, broke the silence with words soft and encourag- 
ing. 



i8 How I Got My Education. 

^' Jack, you need not carry another note for Clar- 
ence ; I have read all from him that I care to read ; 
henceforth he and I are merely friends. I thank you 
for all you have done for me in his behalf." 

" Then, Pauline, live or die, sink or swim, survive 
or perish, I shall be hopeful that success is mine." 

The " brown-eyed maiden " smiled an answer of 
love upon the courageous knight that would beggar 
words for description. The two turned and walked 
together up the green sward from the spring toward 
the old mansion, he to his work behind the counter in 
the basement, she up-stairs to busy herself in the 
domestic affairs of her happy home ; he to dream of 
early becoming the partner and son-in-law of his 
employer ; she to muse on Clarence's surprise and her 
own delight at being the queen of her father's senior 
clerk. 

To fully appreciate the little thread of love which 
will run through these pages, showing the fatal rock 
upon which many a youth has wrecked his little harque^ 
let us go back a few pages in the history of the hero 
of this story. 

In that great valley of Virginia known as the 
Shenandoah — close by the foot of a spur of the "Blue 
Ridge" called the Massanutten Mountain — stands a 
small but attractive country cottage. In front of tiie 
house runs a bright, sparkling mountain branch, wind- 



How I Got My Education, ig 

ing through cedars, witchhazels and willows, watering 
the green meadow which stretches to tt e north of the 
cottage. Just behind this humble but Christian abode 
the mountain slope begins its ascent, rising for more 
than a mile and looking over the beautiful valley 
which sleeps so peacefully between these mountain 
ranges, after the din and bustle of four years' strife 
has been hushed to silence. 

The war is over ; the smoke of battle has now de- 
parted ; the bugle no longer calls father to meet the foe 
who have so often laid waste their beloved and happy 
home. But is the father rich? Can he now retire 
and rest from his labors, educate his children and en- 
joy the comforts of an easy and quiet life ? JNo, no ! 
Would it had been so ! With two mules and a horse 
brought out of the late conflict, a large family depend- 
ing upon his efl'orts, on a small farm, some parts of 
which were very rocky, there was required the earn- 
est attention of father and older boys, leaving but 
little time for thought and literary enjoyment. 

Day after day and month after month did the youth 
of that humble home plow and sow, reap and mow, 
in those hot June-bug days ; and haul wood and 
shovel snow in those long, cold Yirginian winters. 

There is much in a good, earnest desire. But de- 
sire, backed by an honest intention, together with a 
true conviction of right, becomes at once a power 



20 How I Got My Education. 

which must evidently create action — and action is all 
that is worth anything in this world. A man's desire 
may be wholesome, his purposes good, his convictions 
strong, but without action all falls hopelessly to the 
ground. 

The eldest of the four boys had a desire to flee 
from the rocks and roots and harvest fields, and wood- 
hauling in snow storms, and seek a place more conge- 
nial with his mental and physical make-up. This 
youth had the honest conviction that he was never in- 
tended for a farmer; he might have been cut out for 
one, but was mightily spoiled in the making. He 
wanted to be a clerk. 

This anxious desire to mix and mingle with prints 
and lawns, bleached cotton and dress goods, hose and 
slippers, ruffles and bustles, hooks and eyes, hair pins 
and braids, starch and lace collars, twenty-button kids 
and corsets, led this youth, with father's permission, 
from the farm to the store. 

A grand departure, this ! I remember leaving one 
cold December evening, behind another boy, on horse- 
back, with my clothes tied up in an old-fashioned 
oil-cloth bag, and arriving at the residence of my em- 
ployer after a ride of about fifteen miles, at nine 
o'clock that cold winter December evening. 

Old Squire Prestine was the gentleman who had 
ofliered me the position as clerk in one of his dry goods 



How I Got My Education. 21 

stores ; and it was his daughter, Pauline Prestine, that 
proved to be the heroine in the little story about to be 
recited. She was no heroine to me at that time. My 
goddess was the mercantile business, and I bowed in 
humble reverence to every proposition made me by 
my new employer, 

I^ext morning, the bargain being made, and quite a 
meagre salary agreed upon, I *was informed by the 
old Squire that my services were needed at one of his 
])raiich stores about twenty miles distant; but that the 
horses were busy, and my only chance to get there 
would be to walk. 

"Walk twenty miles T 

"Yes, sir !" 

"With these heavy brogan boots on, filled with Hun- 
garian tacks to keep them from wearing out ? Walk 
twenty miles over this hard, frozen ground without 
any dinner V 

"That's the programme," said the Squire ; and I saw 
in his countenance a kind of a "you-can-do-that-or-go- 
back-home" expression. Then I thought, "There's no 
royal road to learning" the mercantile business. 
But thank kind fortune, 1 had the grit to try it. 

Leaving the little village of L , just as the sun 

rose from behind the snow-capped mountain peaks — 
painting the white frost into a thousand sparkling 
gems, and the sharp mountain air making red the nose 



22 How I Got My Education. 

and ears of the out-door boy, the new clerk was seen 
moving off in the direction of his new home. 

After a two hours' walk, coming suddenly upon an 
eminence in the road, the steeple of the old town 
clock, the glittering spires of the churches, and the 
blue smoke curling and intermingling with the tall 
houses and tree tops, revealed to the ravished eyes of 
the country boy the beautiful town of H , sit- 
uated in the very heart of the Shenandoah Yalley. To 
a youth unaccustomed to the fascinating ways of the 
world, this was a grand treat ! 

" I'll take in the town," said I. "I've started out 
to make money and see the world, and I'll soon have 
plenty of filthy lucre. So I'll just call in at one of 
these stores and pick me out a nice hat, send in for it 
soon, and throw this old slouched hat away ; clerks 
don't wear such hats as this anyway." 

So on my arrival at Main street, I stepped into one 
of the large dry goods stores, and a clerk approached 
me and said : 

" Yell, vot ish it ?" 

" I wish to look at a fashionable hat, if you please." 

"Yell, you kin schist look ad him. Dot ish ein 
goot hoot, dot ish ein besser hoot, und dot ish ein 
bestes hoot." 

" What do you ask for the price of this hat ?" 

" Ein doller und zeventy-five zents, und ids sheat ad 
haf de moneys." 



How I Got My Education. 2j 

'' All right, sir ; I'll take this one if you will lay it 
away until I come to town again." 

Eef you paj^s me ver id, I lays 'Im avay." 

" But, sir, I haven't the change now." 

** Yell, den you pays me dwenty vive zents ver my 
droubles. Eef you dond, I calls in der bolice und has 
you bud in der schail." 

Then I thought, " You vas von vool mit vooten 
head," and 1 walked out mighty quick, and struck up 
the road for my new home, where they had no ^' vool" 
Jews to bother me with '^ dot kind of beeshniss." 

About three o'clock that afternoon I arrived at my 
destination with the skin all rubbed off my heels, 
awfully hungry and tired, but anxious to enter upon 
the duties of the high position to which I had been 
called. Next morning I was initiated into the busi- 
ness of country clerk. 

Well, perhaps some young fellows don't know what 
the character of a new country clerk's duties is. 
Well, for three months I fed chickens and turkeys, 
ducks and geese, pigs and calves, packed rags and 
feathers, eggs and wool, dried fruits and pole-cat 
skins, swept out the store and carried water, cut wood 
and made fires ! 

A grand and elevated calling this ! " Who would 
be a farmer when such a distinguished business as this 
could be had ? Not this chicken," thought I. 



24- How I Got My Education. 

But the stone which the builders rejected soon be- 
came the head of the corner. It was but a short time 
until the boss sent for me to come back to this town 

of L , his place of residence, where I became 

the senior clerk, the corresponding secretary, the 
chief-cook-and-bottle-washer, and above all, oh ! must 
I say it, I blush to murmur the rest, the — the man — 
the m-a-n who — who w-a-s in love with — with his em- 
ployer's daughter ! 

Yes, it was in the little town of L , that Clar- 
ence Morton, Pauline Prestine and myself, played a 
little game that mighty nearly bursted up my hopes for 
an education. 

Three years of my life at L glided by as qui- 
etly as the running of Magara Falls — for you know 
that true love runs as smoothly as Niagara and as mu- 
sically as a dozen tom cats on a house-top in a mid- 
winter night. Those were days of knightly glory ! 
Pauline and I met in the parlor by the soft light of 
the burning taper; on the front piazza, in the softer 
and dimmer glow of the evening starlight, and by 
the spring, under the June-apple tree, as the day died 
away into dreamy twilight. We found it convenient 
to attend church together ; to go to camp-meetings, 
picnics and parties — often through deep snow — when 
the music of the sleigh-bells chimed in so musically 
with the song our happy hearts were singing. 



Hozv I Got My Education. 25 

Thus summer and winter, autumn and spring, were 
all one season to us. Soon we should be married and 
I should be one of the firm — happy socially, happy 
as a business man — happy alway ! 

Clarence Morton had been Pauline's first sweet- 
heart, and attractive and graceful as he was. the new 
clerk was too much for him. 

Clarence stuck out his shingle as a lawyer and point- 
ed to his profession as his mistress. He had retired 
from the fight, leaving me the successful knight with 
Pauline. I stood cock of the walk. Clarence drank 
— that's what ruined him with the old folks and with 
Pauline too. I had the advantage of him there — I 
did not drink. Boys, never drink ! 

But in the midst of all this feast of joy and ex- 
pected perfection of bliss, a "sudden change came 
over the spirit of my dreams"; I had been raised by 
loving. Christian parents, who, if they could not give 
me an education, had tried to impress early piety upon 
my young heart, and suddenly I felt that the world 
was offering me too much ; that I was in danger of 
cheating myself out of my soul — in a word, I felt 
called upon to spend my time and talents in the min- 
istry. 

What ! Must I sacrifice my business relations with 
the old Squire, and be a poor man the rest of my days 
with the words of the poet ringing in my ears ever 
and anon — 



26 How I Got My Education. 

'* No foot of land do I possess, 
No cottage in this wilderness?" 

Above all, must I sacrifice the only woman in the 
world who loves me, and sever these sweet ties which 
bind us into such a bundle of concentrated bliss ? 
" Aye, there's the rub — it doth make cowards of us 
all." I knew that to preach would require a lon^ and 
tedious course in college, besides the time it would 
take to get ready financially for prosecuting my 
studies. Moreover, to leave Pauline was to lose her ; 
for she had not promised to wait five or six years for 
me, and then be a preacher's wife. I knew if she did 
promise she would not wait. But these were my hon- 
est convictions, worked out by many an hour of anx- 
ious thought, and thank goodness for a spirit that 
prompts a man to do what he believes to be his duty, 
even in the face of all opposition, and at the sacrifice 
of the dearest and sweetest idol of his brightest fan- 
cies. 

Finally, I summoned up courage enough to break 
the secret to Pauline. It was a sad time indeed ; but 
not so sad as I had expected. I had thought to see 
her turn coldly and indifferently away from me and 
leave me to weep alone. But when I said : 

" Pauline, my convictions, from a moral standpoint, 
require that our marriage be postponed for at least 
^\Q years, and that these pleasant associations be fre- 



How I Got My Education. 2^1 

quentlj broken into by intervals of long absence ; 
that ray life be spent in the ministry, which will re- 
quire much time and preparation for such a life- 
work !" 

When I revealed to her these, my recent convic- 
tions, why, like ail other good little women, she was 
true as steel, for the moment. 

" Pauline, to leave you is to lose you, I know — I 
know it is ! You will not wait ; and how can I lose 
you, the hope of all my future happiness?" 

I turned to leave the room with an over-burdened 
heart, but, laying her hand on my shoulder, she said r 

" Jack, I will wait for you, and when you return, 
an educated man, I will, if possible, be prouder of you 
than now.'' 

" How kind and true you are ; I know you will 
wait !" 

(Yes ; they all wait — but it is till some other fellow 
comes along) and I said to myself as I left the room : 

" What will Clarence be doing in all my absence ?" 

The cold chills ran down my spinal column till I 
could have spit out ice-cream just by drinking sweet 
milk. 

Next morning when the old Squire came in the 
store, I said : 

" Squire, I'm very sorry, but I am going to leave 
in a few days — hope you will not be inconvenienced 
in finding some one to fill my place.'' 



28 How I Got My Education. 

" Where are you going ?" inquired the Squire, 
with some surprise upon his countenance. 

"Going to educate myself, and spend my life in 
another vocation." 

'^ Oh, nonsense ! You have education enough. I 
was just thinking of turning over the new store, up 
on the river, and giving you half the profits." 

" That's a fine ojffer, Squire ; but my convictions 
lead me into another channel of life and activity." 

'' What is your programme for the future," inquired 
the Squire. 

" My life will be spent in the ministry, sir." 

" Oh, if that's it, your conscience will soon be at 
ease ; it's a mere momentary conviction, which will 
blow over in a little while." 

"I guess not, Squire ; I've fought it too long and 
too hard already to be deceived. My purposes are 
fixed. I leave next Tuesday." 

" 1 am sorry, very sorry, my boy, but I haven't any- 
thing more to say." 

When the next Tuesday evening's sun sank to rest 
behind the blue hills in the far west, I sat under the 
weeping willow at my mountain home with book in 
hand, studying a lesson to recite to my sister the next 
day. For the next few months I was under the 
pleasant tutoring of my sweet sister, whose early ad- 
vantages had been better in literary culture, and who 



Hozv I Got My Education. 2^ 

had acquired some proficiency as an educator in our 
immediate ricigliborhood. But many were the times 
I stole off to the little village of L on a Satur- 
day evening to see Pauline, and talk over our future 
prospects, when I should become an educated man, 
and fill my mission in life as an itinerant Methodist 
preacher. 

How hard were the pages of rhetoric and the 
problems of mathematics to a mind whose early train- 
ing had been thus neglected ! TIow frequent were the 

wishes to be back at the village of L , or a partner 

in the new store on the river, instead of trying to get 
an education without money or other necessary advan- 
tages. But in the face of all opposition I said, "I 
will," and things wilted. 

But to accomplish my purposes, what more must be 
sacrificed? I cannot board at home and attend col- 
lege, or even a good hi^^h school. I must go to some 
place where I can work for a while, and attend college 
for a while, and thus work my way over" the seeming 
impassable barriers which loomed up in ray pathway 
from ignorance to a moderate degree of mental at- 
tainment. 

Virginia is a grand old State ; her colleges are good, 
her climate conducive to culture, but to the poor boy 
there are other places where success is more certain, 
and certainly more rapid ; and, thank goodness, Geor- 



JO How I Got My Education. 

gia is such a place. While her sons were left poor 
from the ravages of the war, there is no place in the 
Southern States where there are finer facilities for 
young men to utilize in attaining education. Her 
winters are mild, giving more time in which to work ; 
the people are kind and generous, often lending a 
helping hand to the toiling youth, as he seeks employ- 
ment. 

Teachers and canvassers, especially those who go 
out in the summer vacations from colleges, meet the 
approval of all true Georgians. It was to this field I 
was luckily directed, and will ever thank kind Provi- 
dence for allowing my lines to fall in such pleasant 
places. 

Of course to do this I must make one more final and 
exceedingly sad sacrifice — I must leave home ! Write 
that sentence, will you, young man, and put it into ac- 
tion, and you will make the sacrifice that tells for good 
or for evil on the life of the youth, for time and for 
eternity. The holy influences of praying parents, the 
sweet association of loving sisters, and the heavenly 
benediction that hangs like an oracle about the paren- 
tal roof, when once sacrificed, leaves an aching void 
that strangers' parents and other boys' sisters can never 
(fully) fill. The Paulines and the Susies, the Marys and 
the Janes may be found anywhere at any time, "the 
woods is full uv 'em," but mothers and fathers, sisters 



How I Got My Education. ji 

and brothers will be found nowhere in this broad world 
but a,t '"'Home /'' But where they are, and there only, 
is home — whether in the fertile valley of the Shen- 
andoah, or in the arid desert, or among the rocky cliffs 
of the Sierra Nevadas. For Heaven's sake, don't de- 
preciate home. You may discount sweethearts fifty 
cents on the dollar, and then call it a good trade, but 
let home go for its par value, for "home is home, be 
it ever so homely." 



CHAPTER II. 

MY FIRST BIG TRIP FROM HOME. 

In the days of '76, when every railroad station was 
lined with the flaming advertisement, "Go West, 
Young Man, Go West !" and many of the noblest sons 
of the "Mother State" were taking up their march 
with the motley crowd, in their eager press across the 
Mississippi, some, perhaps, to fill the high calling of 
a "cow-boy," others to stump the State of Texas for 
the cause of temperance, with a bottle of wliisky in 
each pocket, and others, doubtless, to be elected chief 
marshal at the lynching of some one of their own 
party, I heard a gentle voice, low, but sweet, saying, 
"Come to the 'land of the Sunny South,' a land whose 



02 How I Got My Education. 

genial sun, balmy air, fertile soil and generous people 
offer a rich harvest to those who ''fear not to tread 
where duty leads.' " 

This was a year for leaving home. Englishmen and 
Frenchmen left home that year, Germans and Scotch- 
men, Irishmen and Spaniard^, Esquimaux and Lap- 
landers, Icelanders and Portuguese, our Brother in 
Black, our Sister in Ked, our Cousin John in Yellow, 
and our Uncle-connecting-link, the Baboon — all had 
left home that year and had congregated in Philadel- 
phia at our ''grand, gloomy and peculiar" Centennial. 

It was indeed a time for leaving. New departures 
were taking place every day. So I began to pack. 

First of all I must get rid of those things which I 
will not need when I get to Georgia, for Georgia, from 
a Yirginia standpoint, has the finest climate in the 
-^orld — a perfect fairy land — no rain except when and 
where it is absolutely needed, no mud, except at the 
brickyards, no snow nor ice nor cold weather, nor 
rocks, nor briars, nor thorns, nor thistles, nor snakes, 
nor mosquitoes, nor sandflies, nor "chiggers." Ko ! 
nothing but flowers and fruits and cotton and negroes! 
and — other good things. 

So I had a private sale at home, and sold my um- 
brella and overshoes, my overcoat and buckskin 
gloves, buffalo robe and fur cap, fur gauntlets and 
woolen undershirts, high top boots and heavy socks. 



Hoiv I Got My Education, jj 

In short, I just dressed up in what I called a regular 
*' Down South suit," low quarter shoes, thin, white 
socks, loose turn down collar and white cravat, a light 
straw hat, well perforated, and all things else to suit. 

Well, I must go by the Centennial. I've started 
out to educate myself, and an education would be in- 
complete without taking in at least one Centennial, 
and as I might not get to the next one I must go now 
or never. Besides, I wanted to see my kinfolks. 
Some of them had been living over there about the 
Garden of Eden ever since our Father Adam first 
went to housekeeping. Now, as they had come so far, 
it would be discourteous not to meet them in the 
" City of Brotherly Love." 

Don't you forget it, it suited very well for me to 
leave home on Sunday evening, and go by the little 

village of L , that an early start might be made 

from that station next morning. 

Now of course i^auline would not have gone any- 
where without her father's permission ; but it was 
rumored that he had a notion to send her off that 
evening, for fear she might want to go along to the 
Centennial. 

It is Sunday afternoon. The sun hangs low in the 
west. The willow branches sway to and fro in the 
zephyrs that steal down from the densely shaded gor- 
ges where the crystal spray and foam dashes from 



J^ How I Got My Education. 

cliff to cliff, forming a thousand rainbows from the 
Bunlight that filters through the thick green foliage of 
forest oaks. 

The small spring wagon stands at the stile with 
driver, trunk and valise aboard. Father and mother, 
sisters and brothers, stand around to give the last 
shake of the hand and imprint the final kiss upon the 
cheek of hirn whose moustache will be too much in 
the way for that when he returns. 

The old dog gets up from his shady place and looks 
on with a sad countenance. The calf in the yard 
ceases to chew its cud, as much as to say : " I'm about 
to lose a mate.'' The ducks made out of the branch, 
and quack^ quah, their final farewell. In fact every- 
thing movable and immovable seemed to sa 
well, Brudder Jonee*." 

The hills and dales, orchards and vineyards, soon 
shut from view the sweet home, with its hallowed 
influences which clustered so thickly about the old 
cottage. He is gone ! Yes, gone to look no more 
upon these sacred scenes in five long years. 

Oh ! how sad are these partings. But perhaps you 
would ask what that had to do with my education. 
"Well, it had a great deal to do with it. It's what Dr. 
Haygood calls '' cutting loose from your mother's 
apron string." 1 have seen some young fellows in 
college who had not fully done that, and they made 
fools of themselves. 



How I Got My Education, j^ 

But when once awaj, I left off grieving and tried 
to make every sweet girl my sister, and every good 
woman my mother (in law) and thus learned to love 
the home of my adoption. 

The shadows are lengthening, the village of L 

rises to view, the lights are beginning to glow as twi- 
light sinks into darkness. Two young hearts meet on 
the piazza in the pale starlight once more to say 
farewell. 

Now, just along here, many a fellow has given up 
the best purposes of his life and yielded to the senti- 
mentality which evidently exists iu great abundance 
on such occasions as these. Kot so in this case. 

" I leave you to-morrow morning, Pauline, on the 
early train, and it may be years before we meet again. 
The toil and anxiety which await me already burden 
my heart when I think upon what lies before me. 
But duty — that's the biggest word to me, now, in the 
English language — and duty says I must leave you. 
The injunction is, ' Seek ye first the kingdom of God 
and His righteousness, and all these things shall be 
added unto you' " — (such as wife and children, moth- 
er-in-law and old maid sisters, doctors' bills, shoe- 
makers' bills, mercliants* bills, leaky houses, lands, 
smoky stovepipes, sleepless nights when the baby has 
the thrush, or is teething, all this, with tribulation — 
when I revolved all this in my mind I felt " kinder" 



J 6 How I Got My Education. 

glad that these things were postponed rather indefi- 
nitely.) 

" But, Jack, I'll be true, and the days and years 
will soon glide by, and you will be back again, never 
to be separated from me as long as life shall last.'' 

There stood " two souls with but a single thought, 
two hearts that beat as one." 

The day dawns, the train rolls into the little station, 
the whistle blows, the bell rings, and in an hour I am 
thirty miles nearer Philadelphia than ever before. 
Once upon the road, I throw myself back into the seat 
with a kind of an air of '' I'm traveling." 

Education consists, you know, of varied informa- 
tion^ and to take a trip once in a while is a good 
thing. But this was my first trip. 

Presently a young fellow spied me and he said to 
himself, " that's my chance." Picking up a basket 
he struck for me. Well, that basket ! I had never 
seen the like before, and when he had got through 
with me I had bought a vegetable ivory needle case, a 
plush pincushion, a whistle, a tin horn, a rattle, a prize 
package of paper, a prize package of candy, a little 
gum thing you put over the mouth of a bottle filled 
with milk, a pocket saw-mill, a cross-eyed darning 
needle and a left-handed gimlet ! Yes, sir, I did ! Of 
course you say, " What made you do it?" Yes, I say 
" What made me do it, too ?" I was getting my edu- 



How I Got My Education. 57 

cation. I don't do that way now. What made you 
do that way the first time you went from home ? You 
did not know any better. That's the kind of a man 
I was. 

But let me tell you ; I traded those things off. 

" What for ?" 

For a monkey. 

" What did you do with the monkey ?" 

Ah ! thereby hangs a (monkey's) tale. 

Late in the afternoon, about 4 o'clock, we rolled into 
the prettiest city I had ever seen ; when the engine 
settled down in Camden street station, I stepped out 
upon the beautiful streets of Baltimore. 

As so many people have been to Baltimore and 
know so much more about the place than I do, I for- 
bear describing the place. It is, indeed, a model city, 
and the little while I was there was a treat. 

Next morning I started for Philadelphia. Leaving 
the city we soon came to the bridge that spans the 
beautiful Susquehanna. Ah! that grand old river, as 
it flows so gently, with scarcely a ripple, into the 
Chesapeake Bay, its banks lined with habitations, form 
a scene which inspires the youth with grand and ele- 
vated thoughts. 

A few short hours' ride through elegant farms, dot- 
ted here and there with neat dwellings, large and well 
filled barns, beautiful plank fences all whitewashed, 



J 8 How I Got My Education. 

and clover stacks literally checking the green mead- 
ows, with cattle, sheep and horses grazing leisurely in 
clover knee high, and we were soon in sight of the 
citv of William Penn. 

I put up at the "Atlas Hotel," kept on the European 
plan — that is, you call for what you want and pay for 
what you don't get. 

I did not want much of anything except a bed, and 
I didn't get much of that — just three slats and two 
sheets. 

My good mother had filled one side of my valise 
with chicken and ham, pickles and cake, jelly and 
dried beef, hard-boiled eggs and apple pie, butter, bis- 
cuits, etc. 

So, I did not want anything I saw at the Centennial 
(for I had plenty of toys) except one thing, a pretty 
little piano — I wanted it bad, I wanted it — to stop that 
awful bellowing and squealing. 

This must have been the piano that Rubinstein 
played when the old countryman went to the city for 
the first time. 1 know it was the one they played the 
first time I went. 

I did not exactly see the " stream of silver running 
over pebbles of gold, and the little white- winged angel 
leading the music away off down through the meadow, 
out of hearing, while the leaves of the bushes danced 
and bowed as it passed away," but I tell you what I 



How I Got My Education. jp 

did see — I saw two or three men and women holding 
the keys trying to lock the thing up and shut its 
mouth, and they could not do it. It just bellowed on. 
It was one of those grand, old steam " planners" of 
the six driver-wheel kind, and it just moved right 
along, never stopping at any small stations for wood, 
water, coal, mail, or female. It was a tlivoiigh fast 
mail. 

Well, I saw everything at the Centennial, the ''world 
in a cocoanut shell." I have not seen but one thing 
since that I didn't see at the Centennial. That was my 
twenty-fifth birth-day — they didn't have that there. 

It was strange to me that one could become so lone- 
some in so vast a crowd as that. But, among all the 
motley crowd of presidents, governors, statesmen, 
colonels, generals, 'squires, magistrates, kings and 
queens, earls and princesses, cardinals and archbish- 
ops, the ''wise men of the east," the rich men of the 
west, the fool from all quarters of the globe, and Tom 
Walker, with not one man, woman, child, monkey or 
baboon into whose face I had the pleasure of looking, 
did I have the slightest acquaintanceship. 

I was reminded of the beautiful words of Byron in 

Childe Harold, when he said : 

"To sit on rocks, to muse o'ec flood and fell, 
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, 
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, 
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been ; 



^o How I Got My Education, 

To climb the trackless mountain all unseen 
With the wild flock that never needs a fold ; 
Along o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean ; 
This is not solitude, 'tis but to hold 
Converse with nature's charms and view her stores unroll' d." 

"But 'midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, 
To hear, to see, to feel and to possess, 
And roam along, the world's tired denizen. 
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless. 
Minions of splendor shrinking from distress ! 
None that with kindred consciousness endued. 
If we were not, would seem to smile the less. 
Of all that flatter' d, follow' d, sought or sued, 

This is to be alone ; this, this is solitude !" 

I would not have been half so lonely with Pauline, 
under the June apple tree, as I was there in that park, 
among all those people and big houses. 

I learned another thing at the Centennial, and that 
was that a '^ Guide Book'' to an affair like that was 
just about as useful to a visitor as a foreign guide 
who speaks but one language would be to an Ameri 
can tourist in Europe. 

Of course, I wanted to see everything and know 
where it came from — the author, the inventor, the 
designer and translator, who captured it, and how it 
was tamed, who wore it, and how long it was worn 
without washing, its .size, weight, age, and capacity, 
cost of its importation and price of its history. 

So I bought a Guide Book (yes, a guide book) to 
the Art Gallery, Machinery Hall, the Main Building, 



How I Got My Education. at 

the U. S. Building, Horticultural Hall, the Glass 
Works, the Woman's Pavilion, the Men's '' Distil^ 
lion," the Turkish Bath House ; one to the Cafe Maz- 
erin, the Cafe Halle des Femmes, the Bonnee foi, the 
Rue Yivienne, the Cafe de Eat Mort (the cafe of the 
dead rat). I bought one to the Bois de Boulogne, 
another to Yaudeville, the Gjmnas, the Palais Royal, 
the Ambigue, etc., and, finally, one to know how to 
get away from these places ; and more finally, one to 
know how to get out of the grounds. '" Every road 
leads to Rome," but the trouble was to find one that 
led from Rome. Well, I just roamed about. 

But that wasn't all. I had to hire a guide to teach 
me how to use this library. I wanted an index to the 
indices. Moreover, while some invalids had to hire a 
three-wheeled chair to convey them from one place to 
another, it was more necessary that I should hire some 
one to carry my guide books. 

Thank goodness, one may live and learn ; and by 
the time I was ready to go to the Yorktown Centen- 
nial, five years later, I had learned not to buy guide 
books. 1 was guided then by the dust ! I knew that 
where there was so much dust there must be some- 
thing going on, so I followed the dust. Don't forget 
that, and never buy a guide-book if it's dusty. 

Something else struck my fancy there, though, and 
I invested my spare change this time in Yorktown- 



^ How I Got My Education, 

Oentennial-Medals. Thej had 'em from ten cents up. 

Leaving the Philadelphia Centennial, I found my- 
self back in the city of Baltimore preparatory to start- 
ing for my new home in the South. 

I had written to the general ticket agent of that city 
for prices of different routes, and had been informed 
by his excellency that the cheapest and best route was 
from Baltimore via Hichmond, to Atlanta, Ga. 

Stepping into the ticket office I called for one first- 
class ticket via Richmond to Atlanta. 

" The recent rains, sir, have so demolished the 
route that a passage that way would be impracticable," 
said one of the sub-agents. 

"Well, sir," said I, "you have written me that this 
was the route for me, and have specified the price, and 
I have governed myself accordingly ; it would be im- 
possible for me to retrace my steps via Staunton, 
Lynchburg and Dalton with the change I now carry 
in my vest pocket !" 

"I guess you are mistaken, sir, about the informa- 
tion we gave you." 

"I suppose not, sir ; you had better look up your 
files and copied letters." 

I just stood there, like Joe Brown's son, and as- 
serted my rights with confidence. They began to in- 
vestigate. The general agent came in, and the senior 
clerk, and after a while they rendered the verdict of — 

''You're correct, sir." 



How I Got My Education. ^j 

"Yes, sir, thank yon. What are you going to do 
about it ?" and I stood right there. 

"W-e-1-1," said the general agent, "I guess I — I'll 
have to fix you up a ticket ;" and what do you think ! 
That man fixed me up a coupon ticket that sent me 
eight hundred miles West, six hundred miles South, 
and two hundred miles East ! all for less than twenty 
dollars. I was really glad it had rained so hard down 
about Eichmond, so I could take a long route, all for 
the same money. 

They called it an " emigrant ticket.'' I called it a 
kind of half -fare-free-ride-ticket. I hardly knew which 
way I was going ; felt very much like asking them to 
tag me like a bag of wool, so if I got lost I could be 
returned to them, that they might start me out again. 

That night about ten o'clock the emigrant took his 
seat, and all night long the old train rolled and rattled 
over hill and dale, spanning gorges and rivers, running 
under cliffs and through mountains, until daylight 
found us away out in the mountains of West Vir- 
ginia. 1 was really going West when I meant to go 
South. 

It was a wonder to me to see the coal and iron re- 
gions. The hills were dug and tunneled ; the valleys 
were trestled and filled in ; the houses were black, the 
trees were black, and the smoke and fog that hung 
like a curtain of night over these cities were almost 
impenetrable. 



/f.^ How I Got My Education. 

For miles and miles the railroad ran up and down 
the mountain, at times away up among the rocks and 
cliffs, with the Cheat Kiver a mile below; then it 
would dart down and skim along the water's edge, 
giving one continual panoramic view of picturesque 
mountain scenes, filling the soul with music and 
poetry, which can only give expression in great sighs 
of ''It's grand ! Oh, it's wonderful !" That's all you can 
do. 

But after awhile the green meadows, golden grain- 
fields, with bonnie lasses driving the reapers ; fine 
orchards, rich, dark green cornfields, cosey country 
farm houses, and large white barns peculiar to the 
State of Ohio, literally crowded upon the view. 

A short stop for dinner at Chillicothe, and West- 
ward we rolled. 

Late in the afternoon, just about sunset, the noise 
of factories, foundries, steam mills, the roll and rattle 
of carriages, omnibuses and drays, the smoke and 
steam from a thousand manufactories, the towering- 
steeples and granite walls of elegant buildings — all 
told of our arrival in the ''boss city of the West," 
Cincinnati. 

Thirty minutes for supper and I knew nothing of 
the busy West. I lay down to sleep in Cincinnati 
and took breakfast in Nashville ! I was emigrating 
rapidly. 



Hozv I Got My Education. a^ 

It was not long after leaving Nashville till I knew 
I was getting down in the land of the "Sunny South." 

The winding cotton rows, sweet potato ridges, pea- 
nuts and negroes, together with the absence of hay- 
stacks, meadows, spring houses, large barns, fat cattle 
and apple orchards, showed that I had changed base. 
This is no hase contrast which I have drawn between 
the two sections, either. 

Indeed, that day's ride was one of weariness to me. 
That part of the country from Kashville to Chatta- 
nooga, with the rain pouring down in torrents, till the 
cotton and sweet potatoes stood six inches in water, 
and the emigrants' car leaking, soiling his down South 
suit, presented a scene not much adapted to the feel- 
ings of a young tourist. 

I sighed for my native "Blue Ridge Home" and the 
little town of L — . 

But after awhile the sun broke forth, the mocking 
bird sang sweetly in the crab-apple tree, the zephyrs 
from the Gulf cleared the mist and fog from the 
sweet-winding Tennessee, which lay like a silver gir- 
dle around the base of Lookout Mountain and the 
city of Chattanooga. 

I was really fascinated with the contrast, and 
when we struck the old State road with its solid bal- 
last and steel rails, we shot like a swift-winged bird 
down past Dalton, Ringgold, Kingston (that's one 



/}.6 How I Got My Education. 

time I did not stay long at Kingston), and when the 
whistle rang and the bell hlowed^ I stepped off the 
train in the little city of Carters ville, on Georgia soil 
for my first time. 

Next day, when I sat down to sum up what 1 had 
learned on my first big trip, I found I had more ex- 
perience than money. 



CHAPTER III. 

STUDENT, TEACHER, FARMER, AND AGENT. 

I SHALL never forget the warm reception I received 
from my half-sister and brother-in-law, who had pre- 
ceded me to Georgia three years. The door of their 
humble home was ever open to me, and it was through 
their instrumentality that I came to Georgia to work 
my way through college. Their house was my home 
for the next ten months. 

Education being my purpose, I lost no time in mak- 
ing the necessary arrangements for entering school. I 
agreed to work night, morning and Saturdays in the 
garden and photograph gallery for my board. 

I called on the Professor and asked him to credit 
me for my tuition, which he kindly agreed to do, 
and thank kind Providence for the many other kind- 



How I Got My Education. ^7 

nesses I received at the hands of this true Christian 
gentleman. 

I had six dollars in money. That being spent for 
books, T entered school with the determination to suc- 
ceed. Longfellow says, *'A boy's will is the wind's 
will," but with a strong tide of poverty beating 
against my every effort, together with a dull percep- 
tion, growing out of the lack of early training, I bat- 
tled and struggled until it was at last apparent that I 
had made some little progress in the road to learning. 
Slow and hard of necessity, though, is the march from 
chaos and darkness to order and light. Many were the 
weary hours I spent over the simplest lessons, while 
to others, with early advantages, they would have 
been quite easy. 

But I labored under another great disadvantage — 
this was in a social relation. In Yirginia, if a man is 
a gentleman, no matter what his calling, he is as much 
respected without title, as with title. The farmer, the 
blacksmith, the wheelwright, the miller, are all as 
highly respected as the lawyer, doctor, or merchant. 
Not so in Cartersville. Unless you are the son of a 
doctor, colonel, judge, lieutenant, major, 'squire, or 
something like that, or have some money, you had 
better emigrate " f udder." 

So it seemed more congenial for me to associate 
mostly with my books, the result of which rendered 



/J.8 How I Got My Education. 

me able, at the end of ten months, to find a place in 
the public schools as teacher. I thanked God and 
look courage. 

Summer and autumn glided by without anything 
very unusual taking place, except the hat which I 
thought so perfect for the climate of Georgia proved 
a failure. The holes let the mosquitoes through, and 1 
had to stuff cotton in the crevices to keep them out. 

But, alas ! winter came — a Georgia winter ! it 
may be a little late, and just give you a small shower 
every few hours for about two months in the early 
part of that season ; but do not be deceived — mud and 
rain are not all you will have. No, sir. The first 
winter I spent in Georgia the snow was six inches 
deep. It don't matter if the roses do bloom till De- 
cember, you had better do like I did — get an over- 
coat, a pair of over-shoes, two umbrellas, (four to loan 
out — you will need yours all the time,) thick woolen 
clothes, woolen socks, highcop boots for snow and mud, 
a fur cap with ear flaps to it, and all such things as I 
sold in Virginia when I started to Georgia. It has 
actually been so cold on the coast of Georgia and 
Florida, that the fish have frozen to death and floated 
to the shore. But I never wrote anything like that to 
Yirginia, I knew they would not believe it. But 
they know it is true in Georgia, but they don't like to 
acknowledge it. They are afraid it will injure the 
country. 



How I Got My Education. ^g 

But you say what has all this to do with how I got 
my education ? Why, a great deal. 1 was studying 
geography — climate ! There is more geography in a 
Georgia winter as regards weather^ than in all the text 
books I ever saw. I actually wore my heavy clothes 
nearly out, pulling them off and putting them on, the 
changes were so frequent. 

It's just a moral necessity to know geography (as 
to climate) in Georgia. One day the flowers will peep 
out, and the next day all is hushed and stilled into si- 
lence in the embrace of ice, snow and sleet. 

Nearly a year had passed, vacation had come, and I 
must make some money to pay my debts. But alas ! 
my clothes were threadbare, my hat seedy, my shoes 
worn, no credit established, no money in bank, no 
friends to assist, and to go out among strangers at- 
tempting to make up a school in that kind of an out- 
fit, would have been to have failed and be classed as a 
tramp. Wear good clothes (not as a fop) — they are 
the best investment a young man can make, especially 
if he is among strangers. Dress neatly, hold a high 
head and go forward. 

It is better to borrow enough to buy a good suit of 
clothes and make the money afterwards, than to at- 
tempt, half-dressed, to earn the money first. 

** With all thy getting" get good clothes. So a dear, 
old brother (God bless him,) opened his kind heart 



50 How I Got My Education. 

and loaned me twenty-iive dollars with which I 
dressed myself in a new suit from head to foot. 

So off to the country I started to try my powers in 
teaching the young idea how to shoot. I walked most 
of the way and rode the other, till I found myself at 
last fifteen miles in the country. 

It was one of those beautiful Georgia August days 
— not even a fly was stirring, it was so hot. Ah, me ! 
these are the times that try boys' grit ! Many of 
them give it up right along here ! But two days' 
hard riding, and walking together, over hills and 
rocks, through persimmon bushes and black-jacks, 
and I had a school of thirty-five or forty pupils. One 
man subscribed five — and never sent them a day. He 
did it to encourage me in the outset. I thank him 
for it to this day. 

Three months of hard work in the school-room, and 
I rode into town as independent as a section-master 
on a hand-car. I called round and paid the professor 
my tuition ; called and paid the old brother the 
twenty-five dollars borrowed ; gave my sister twenty- 
five dollars for good pay, and, in fact, I had a few 
dimes left in my pocket besides. 

I went to school about five weeks, and vacation was 
over. My school opened again, and on I taught, and 
went to school alternately, until three sessions had 
passed. 



How I Got My Education, 57 

It is one thing to teach and quite another to collect. 
You can collect children much easier than jou can 
money. I recollect all I got from one man was an old 
musket and a ^' jailer dorg.'' I shot the dog and gave 
the gun away. 

Two years had gone glimmering since I left the 

little village of L . Not a line had I received 

from Pauline. We had promised not to write to each 
other — love, you know, dies out quicker if you don't 
write — and we were true to our promise. 

But one October evening, as 1 strolled home from 
the school-house, tired and worn out from the labors 
of the day, faint of heart and weary of life (for my 
confinement as student and teacher had reduced me 
to a mere skeleton), I was handed a letter, light of 
weight but heavy in meaning, for on it I plainly read 

the post-mark of the little town of L . I glanced 

at the address, and with trembling hands and heaving 
breast, I recognized the handwriting of Pauline ! 

The Chaldean king could not have been more 
puzzled to know the meaning of the strange writing 
on the wall than I was to know the purport of this 
little note. 

" What could it mean ? Is she tired of waiting and is 
writing for my return % They do get tired. Is it an 
invitation to her and Clarence's wedding ? Oh ! if 
that were so, let my epitaph be 



^2 How I Got My Education. 

" My love was false but I was firm 
From my very day of birth ; 
Upon my body lie 
Lightly, gentle earth." 

" Was her father dead, and did they want me to 
return to take charge of the business for them ? If 
that be true, I may go, though I may be required to 
walk. 

" Must I tear it open and devour its contents, like 
gome nervous woman ? or shall 1 wait till after tea, 
and steal off in the twilight among the bushes, where 
nothing but the toad and katydid can see and be 
seen V and I placed it in my side pocket and walked 
three times around the big chestnut tree which stood 
in the yard, and said, "Twice one is two (when you 
are single) ; twice one is one (when you are married)." 

Then I stopped, took the thing out of my pocket, 
and was just about to tear it half in two, when the 
supper bell rang ; and of course I put it back in my 
pocket, and walked in to supper, just like any other 
sensible man would do. 

By the time 1 had eaten my supper I had forgotten 
I had the thing^ and, lighting a choice cigar, I took a 
stroll with the young folks to get chinquepins. 

About nine o'clock I happened to think of the 
strange visitor, and going to my room I shut the 
door and locked it, pulled down the blinds, took off 
ray coat, rolled up my sleeves, i-oached back my hair, 



How I Got My Education. ^j 

brushed the perspiration from mj brows, and — sat 
down. 

There wasn't much in it — a very small affair — but 
it counted : 

"Hoping it may not cause you a moment's real sor- 
row, I feel it my duty to inform you that the prom- 
ises I made you September the 12th, 18Y5, can never 
be fulfilled. AVith many wishes for your future and 
eternal welfare, I remain, 

Your true friend, 

Pauline Prestine." 

It was only two sentences, but of course that ended 
it. Tlis would have been a fine time to have said, 
"Education aint much account, anyway; Pll quit." 
Many a boy has gotten off at this station and taken to 
the woods. 

I said, "Pm sick anyway, and this stroke will end 
my existence. The green grass will soon grow over 
my grave, and my purposes and hopes will all have 
ended ere the white snows of another Georgia winter 
cover the roses. 

I had it bad, don't you forget it. But — 

There's never a day so sunny 

But a little cloud appears ; 
There's never a life so happy 

But it has its time of tears ; 
Yet the sun shines out the brighter 

When the stormy tempest clears. 



5^ How I Got My Education, 

There's never a dream that's happy 

But the waking makes us sad ; 
There's never a dream of sorrow 

But the waking makes us glad ; 
We shall look some day with wonder 

At the troubles we have had. 

Bj morning I felt that I wo aid rather live than 
die. So I got a bottle of Simmon's Liver Regulator, 
two bottles of Cod Liver Oil, one pint of Honej Nec- 
tar, three bottles of Dr. Jayne's Ague Mixture, two 
ounces of Olive Tar, a little of Green's August 
Flower, one bottle of Bluets October Blossom and 
about a dozen spring chickens. Then I began to dose 
myself a little. 

But all to no purpose. I grew thinner every day. 
I spent all the spare change I had on doctors' bills 
and patent medicines, and by the time school closed I 
had nothing in this world left me but a skeleton. 

Then I thought of my father's house, of the many 
plows and harrows, hoes and rakes, mauls and wedges, 
cradles and scythes, which had given me such a good 
appetite, and so many pleasant nights of refreshing 
sleep, and I said, "I will cease feeding these little 
lambs on the dry husks of my dull brain, and will 
arise and go to the farm and say, "I am not worthy to 
be called a farmer, but just make me a digger of bri- 
ars and a piler of stones, and patent medicines and 
doctors' bills will no longer drag me to poverty and 
ruin." 



How I Got My Education, 55 

''Wiiere there's a will there's a way," and if a boy 
is not too proud there are always avenues opening 
where he may enter and succeed. 

It takes good grit, though, I can tell you. 1 shall 
never forget my old friend Union and the six months 
I kept "Bachelor's Hall," and worked on his farm. 

Those were days of a peculiar kind of education ; 
an education that may be needed in the future, when 
my "Pauline" — no ! my "Susie'' — no ! my "Callie" — 
No ! Well, when my — m-y wife is sick and the 
cook's away. (I was about to give myself away, then.) 

Three months later and I was a picture of almost 
perfect health. 

I had helped pick a crop of cotton, sowed a crop of 
wheat, hauled rails, made fences, fed the gin, fired the 
engine, milked the cow and cooked our "grub." 
Yes, sir, I could fry corn bread and bake ham, skin a 
chicken and stew eggs, poach coffee and toast biscuit, 
burn my fingers and scald my foot, just as good as any 
other little woman. 

I used to get dinner on Sunday, then dress up in 
my long-tailed coat, walk leisurely across the fields, 
trimming the dough from under my finger nails, 
walk in on the piazza and take a seat by a white dress, 
and look just as innocent as though I did not know 
how she burnt her finger, scalded her foot and fell 
out of the kitchen door against the slop-tub, and let 



^6 How I Got My Education. 

the beans boil dry, and the cat get her head in the 
cream pitcher, and the dog in the cupboard ; but I 
knew all the time, I'd been there. Education, you 
see, in the culinary department. 

Well, I received only fifty cents a day in money, 
but five hundred dollars per month in health and ex- 
perience. But when I had enough health and expe- 
rience, I wanted more money. 

Farming is good, teaching is better, but canvassing 
beats them all for making money and getting varied 
information. It isn't everyone, though, that can 
stand the first six months of a canvasser's or drum- 
mer's life. The experience is too varied. But if they 
can stand it that long, there is some chance for them 
to succeed. 

Many a youth has wanted an education as badly as 
I did, but rather than undergo the trials and persecu- 
tions of such a life they retired in disgust and got 
married. (Then they got canvassed and curtain lec- 
tured, too.) 

Success is not so much to the swift as to those who 
stick at the thing under persecution. The thing is to 
go in bravely — and stay there. So — 

Never let your chances, 

Like the sunbeams, pass you by ; 
For you'll never miss the water 

Till the spring runs dry. 



How I Got My Education. ^f 

A ]^ew York man got hold of me, and like most 
Northern men, he knew his business, and was deter^ 
mined 1 should know it, too. 

Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well, and 
to thoroughly know what you propose to do is more 
than half the battle. So 1 spent two months over a 
descriptive sheet, telling me how to show a book, and 
when that man was through with me I was really 
ready for business. 

But I had to sacrifice a little false pride, right along 
here. Some of the dead-heads about the town said: 
"Ah ! You're going to be a book agent, are you I 
You'll be classed with the tramps.'' 

Then my time to speak came, and I said, " Yes, 
you're a tramp now ; you tranip from your father's 
house down town, tramp back at noon ; tramp to the 
river and fish all day, and never bring back a minnow, 
tramp home and eat like a tramp ; don't earn a dollar 
in twelve months, and yet Solomon, in all his glory, 
didn't know as much as you do — in your own opinion. 
I'd rather be a successful tramp, and make something 
out of it, than be a failure at that. If I'm to be a 
tramp I'll be a first-class one and make a success of 
it." That's what I said. (They didn't put up the 
next speaker.) 

I thought I saw, in the business just about to be 
entered, greener fields and richer pastures than I had 



^8 How I Got My Education. 

been accustomed to graze in. So I waived prejudice, 
false pride, thoughts of failure, and all that, until 
there was nothing left me but success. 

The dream of the little village of L troubled 

me no longer. When once Pauline had turned the 
current of her love into another channel, of course I 
ceased to grieve about spilt milk and sour grapes. 

The gods had smiled on me again. Another fair 
maiden, a sweet-spirited, blue-eyed Georgian, Rosa 
Hawthorne, had promised to wait till I finished mj 
college course. Such a lovely creation had never 
crossed my path before. 

It seemed, indeed, strange that I should so unex- 
pectedly meet this pure, unsophisticated country wo- 
man. 

It was just inside or outside of North Georgia at a 
camp-meeting, or some other meeting, that I met this 
fair damsel, 

I remember trying to tell her how she impressed 
me, and she was so still you could have heard a gum- 
drop. 

" Miss Rosa, you are the cosiest little woman I ever 
saw." 

" Mr. S , I hardly understand the expression 

*cosey,' I wonder if it's a compliment?'' 

" I am sure. Miss Rosa, you would think it compli- 
mentary could you see the meaning with which I 



Hoiv I Got My Education. ^n 

«ndow the word. Ima^^ine a beautiful little frescoed 
room with Brussels carpet, lace curtains, red shades ; 
hangiug pictures covering the walls ; flowers Woom- 
ing inside the window ; a canary bird in a yellow cage 
hanging in the corner singing its sweet song ; a centre 
table filled with periodicals and niagazines ; a large 
arm-chair softly cushioned ; the glowing coals in the 
grate, ('Does this grate upon your ear? Ko, go on !') 
warming the room, while without the dark, blue clouds 
of a cold winter day hurl and dash the snow-flakes 
over the hard, frozen ground. Yiew the little room 
in contrast with the dreariness of the outside world, 
and you have the definition of the little word cosey?^ 

She caught on to that, and it wasn't long before I 
was living on hope again. 

A good promise is a great thing. You don't know 
whether it will be kept or not ; but you can live in 
hope. I had lived on just such a one several years 
before, and I could have that mirage to lead me on, 
if it never were overtaken. 

The gate of active business life swung wide and in- 
vited me in. I entered. The fields were white unto 
the harvest to every one who would thrust in his 
sickle. Thank God for the generous spirit of the 
Southern business man who stoops down to help a 
poor, struggling youth in his endeavors for mental 
attainment. A thousand different avenues opened 



6o How I Got My Education. 

where one might enter and reap a rich harvest if he 
feared not the golden rays of the glorious sun. 

I have traversed Georgia from mountain to sea 
coast, and in every valley and on every hill-top the 
wealth of a nation sleeps, waiting to be roused and 
put into action. Along her streams and in her val- 
leys are seen the broad acres of productive soil, and is 
heard the music of a thousand factories. 

Why should the young man not succeed? Why 
should he grow up in ignorance if he want an educa- 
tion, though he be poor?. True, some men will try 
to frown you down and ridicule your early efforts to- 
succeed. What if they do ? None but the truly suc- 
cessful in any profession escape such rebuffs ; then 
make yourself one of the successful and escape that 
which is unappreciated in your business. 

I have stood on the banks of the Chattahoochee at 
Columbus, as it fairly dances to the music of the 
" Eagle and Phenix" mills, and there amid fierce com- 
petition, my efforts were crowned with success. I 
pressed my way through the busy streets of the "Gate 
City" with an eye blind to fashion and ear deaf to 
ridicule, my motto labor ovinia vincit, and there hon- 
est toil reaped her reward. 

Twelve months with its variegated experience as a 
book agent had passed ; October had ushered in the 
beautiful fall, physical labor had said, " it is enough 



How I Got My Education, 6i 

for the present, corae up higher.'' Three thousand 
dollars worth of books having been talked into the 
people, 1 called my labors a success. 

Then Emory College, God bless the old institution, 
opened wide her benign arms and welcomed her 
adopted son to her generous bosom. For the first 
time in my life I was what I had so often longed to be 
— a college student. While a college course will not 
make a smart man out of a fool, it is not all a mirage. 
The fountains and lakes, green oases and limpid 
streams which appeared in the distance to entice and 
lead on, were not all illusions. Much was real and 
all was valuable. 



CHAPTELi lY. 

AT COLLEGE AND ON THE ROAD. 

It is Wednesday morning, 10 a. m. October 5th, 
18 — . The whistle blows for Covington, the bell 
rings and a dozen students get oS at the depot, and 
all pile in our hack for the little village of Oxford. 

Each student has a dozen questions to ask the good 
natured hackman. But he has been asked the same 
questions a thousand times, and knows the answer 
without having to think a moment. 

^' Mr. H , how far is it to Oxford ?" 



62 How I Got My Education. 

" Just a mile, sir," is the kind reply. 

" Who keeps the hotel V 

" They have no hotel, but every house in town is a 
boarding-house." 

" Is Emory College right in town ?" 

" Well, just as much in town as the town is in Em- 
ory College ; it's all hid over yonder in the thick foli- 
age together." 

The questions multiply and diversify. 

" Where will I find the President ?" 

" Who examines a student in Greek ?" 

^' Who in Latin ?" 

" Who has the prettiest daughter in town V 

" When does college open ?" 

And a thousand ^ther just as important questions, 
and all answered with equal politeness. 

On rolls the well-filled hack over the beautiful 
road — at this season of the year — and presently we 
halt in front of the little dove-colored post-ofiice. 

Who has ever visited Oxford and not gone away 
with the kindest and most tender recollections of the 
delightful little village ? 

The beautiful clay road that passes through the 
main portion of the little town, and on by the ceme- 
tery, is lost from view a mile in the distance, among 
the dense shadows of the forest that lies northward of 
the outskirts of the town. 



How I Got My Education. 6j 

Southward, the gently undulating landscape, grad- 
ually drooping for a half mile, and then rising and 
falling into hill and dale, and broad meadows, is lost 
beyond the limits of the city of Covington, in the blue 
rim that skirts the horizon. The sun rises from be- 
hind a ridge of thick pine forest, and hangs for a mo- 
ment over the sparkling brook that plays its sweet, 
murmuring song in the meadows below. 

Westward, the sun hides iteelf behind the tall for- 
est oaks that encircle the beautiful grain fields and 
orchards of one of the village farms. On main street 
stand several little stores, with here and there the res- 
idence of one of the professors. 

Back a little, on other streets, are seen the lovely 
cottages of these happy, courteous, Christian people. 
The green sward, carpeting the whole plateau with its 
downy softness ; the tall oaks, locusts, cedars, with 
here and there a magnolia filtering the golden sun- 
light through their delicate green foliage, darkening, 
softening and blending the lights and shadows into a 
" fairy land ;" the white, brown and dove-colored and 
pea-green cottages standing here and there, laughing 
with joy and gladness as they peep out upon the 
smiling day, and above, over all, the blue sky and the 
gentle, sweet-scented breeze, stealing like a dream 
into this Eden, fills the soul with a joy that is akin to 
angels' happiness ! 



6^ How I Got My Education, 

Just a little to one side, in the denser oak grove, 
are lifted the heads of the college buildings. Gravel 
walks lead to every part of the campus, and a plain 
shaft, with an iron railing, rises in honor of the first 
President of the college, Ignatius A. Few. 

A dozen columns would be inadequate to tell of 
the advantages of Emory College as an institution of 
learning. With its magnanimous president, its corps 
of efiicient professors, its splendid buildings, and the 
religious influence permeating every department, it is 
to the young man seeking knowledge what a cool, 
bubbling spring is to a weary traveler in a barren 
desert. 

When I arrived in Oxford one of the very youthful 
boys asked how many sons 1 had brought to college ? 
I looked a little ancient among some of the small fry. 
I took up my abode at one of the mess halls, in fact 
the only one in existence at that time ; not kept in 
such elegant style as now, but better than the one near 
^'Lion's Den," in the days of Dumas. 

Two of us roomed together, did our own sweeping 
and making up of beds — a kind of bachelor's hall af- 
fair. Of course 1 felt perfectly at home. I had grad- 
uated in that department on the farm. 

A bell rings. It is the hour for supper. Twenty 
boys gather around a long but bare-looking table. A 
black-eyed, black-moustached, sharp-featured little 
:fellow sits at the head of the table. 



How I Got My Education. 6^ 

" Well, Mr. S ," said this wit, "this is your first 

trip to Oxford ?" 

" Yes, sir,'' sipping ray coffee with a pewter spoon. 

" First time you ever boarded at a hall ?" 

" Well, not exactly." 

"Now, Mr. S , just make yourself at home. 

Help yourself to what you see and call for what you 
don't see, but call loud, for it's in Atlanta.'' 

We had ham and grits for supper, and grits and 
ham for breakfast. It continued that way until I 
wished I had been born a Jew, that I might not be 
allowed to eat ham at all. 

Then the diet changed. We got fish. And we had 
fish until I almost decided I was a whale living on 
smaller fishes. The change was too seldom, that was 
the trouble. 

One of our boys — the poet — had eaten so many grits 
that his poetical dreams were on that subject. Sitting 
on the steps of the piazza, one lovely evening, his soul 
all inflated with the pure and beautiful, he solilo- 
quized thus : 

" O thou beautiful, silvery, pale-faced moon, you 
look like — like — a — a plate of grits ! ! ! " 

I entered the Freshman and sub-Freshman classes. 
I was behind in Greek and Latin. There was one 
thing I avoided, throughout my whole college course, 
like a child would fire ; I had learned that in my ten 



(5(5 How I Got My Education. 

months' course in Cartersville — not to study too hard. 
They never had to tell me one time, " Hold up, 
boy, you're ruining your eyes ; you'll injure your con- 
stitution." 

There are many pleasant occasions in a college 
course of a social and religious character that break 
the dull monotony of the class-room. Prayer meet- 
ings, experience meetings, Sunday-school teachers' 
meetings, public debates, private debates, evening 
strolls with or without company, base ball, marbles 
and leap-frog. College life, indeed, began very pleas> 
antly for me. 

Along toward the close of Freshman year we struck 
the brush and thicket of Geometry, many ^things in 
connection with which I never understood. 

For instance, the worthy professor in that depart- 
ment asked us many questions on the subject of an- 
gles. 

" Mr. A., what kind of an angle is that L ?'' 

" A right angle, sir." 

" You are correct." 

" Mr. B., what kind of an angle is that ?" 

"An acute angle, sir." 

*^Mr. S., what kind of angle is that ?" 

"A left angle, sir." 

Everything just roared. 1 never did know why 
they laughed so. 



How I Got My Education. 6y 

Another thing which the professor said was always 
a mystery to me, knowing the nature of students as 
well as he did. 

"Young gentlemen, you must get around these 
theorems.'' 

I took him, at hie word. I went round all I could. 
Well, we had gone on our journey for some time, 
climbing perpendicular heights, through horizontal 
plains, making many right, left, acute and obtuse an- 
gles, until we had gotten round a great many theo- 
rems. 

Finally we all came up to the theorem known to 
college students as the "Pons Asinorum" or Bridge of 
Asses. Many had gone that way before. 

It was necessary to cross that bridge in order to 
reach the plains of Trigonometry, the broad fertile 
fields of Analytical Geometry, the mountain slopes of 
Calculus, and finally in Astronomy to swing off into 
space among the stars. But I had borne well in mind 
the injunction of our worthy professor, and had got- 
ten round many difiiculties, both seen and unseen, and 
now I must be true to the injunction. 

The long-eared fellows marched right up to the 
bridge, and while they were attempting to cross, I 
switched off down the river, and many miles below 1 
found a pony, which I mounted — it had been ridden 
before and was gentle — and rode leisurely down be- 



68 How I Got My Education, 

side the murmuring stream to where it was fordable, 
aud in I plunged and reached the further shore in 
safety. But alas, alas ! I had lost my direction, and 
not having a compass to direct my feet toward the 
plain road where the rest of the flock were, I camped 
for many days and nights, all alone in that dark wil- 
derness, without the slightest hope of ever seeing day- 
light again. 

But finally I decided that to remain was to die, and 
to go forward was but to perish, so mounting the lit- 
tle pony, 1 started. Every once in a while, on some 
eminence in my route, I would call out for my crowd, 
and away to the right I would get a faint answer, but 
too indistinct to determine its meaning or learn my 
proper direction. 

The thickets and hedges barred and impeded my 
progress, but on and on I wandered ! Leaving the 
beautiful and undulating plains of Trigonometry far 
to the right, catching only at times a faint glimpse of 
the green sward and square plateaus in front of the 
elegant octagonal-shaped dwellings, my little narrow, 
hemmed up path becoming less and less passable at 
every turn. 

On I pressed, calling out occasionally from some 
high place on my route as the waving grain fields of 
Analytical Geometry lay far to the right. But, like 
Moses, I could only see them. I could not get there I 



How I Got My Education. 6g 

A faint voice could occasionally be heard to 8ay: 
*'Come this way; it's beautiful here in these rich 
fields." 

Then, perhaps, a fainter voice would say, " stay 
where you are, there's nothing good here." 

But "on, Stanley, on." I could see the mountain 
slope of Calculus loom up before me in the distance, 
with its waving branches and its crystal fountains 
sending out their silvery mist and spray over the fer- 
tile plains below. 

Finally, after days and weeks of wandering in the 
maze and wilderness, 1 came out into the plain road, 
where the boys had camped awhile at the foot of the 
mountain of Calculus. 

I never rode a pony again. 

I sat down and listened to the stories of the boys — 
of where they had been and what they had seen, and 
how sumptuously they had fared, until I almost wished 
I had crossed the bridge with the rest of the troop. 

On up the mountain we climbed and finally scaled 
the top, and inflating a baDoon with astronomical gas, 
soared off among the stars. 

We never could have gotten back but the balloon 
bursted, and each man having sufficient gas of his 
own manufactured to inflate his empty head, every- 
one let themselves down gently to earth. 

Commencement approached ; a few days intervening 



yo How I Got My Education, 

before the regular exercises began, and not wishing to 
lose any time, I took a small volume, known as " Our 
Brother in Black," and went down to Madison to see 
what I could do in introducing him down there, but 
I returned next day with most of the colored breth- 
ren with me on the seat. 

When commencement was over and vacation had 
separated the students into a thousand different fields, 
and had given them as many different vocations, I 
took up my abode in the beautiful city of Augusta. 

Had I been going somewhere for pleasure, I should 
have sought a cooler place, but strictly business was 
my motto. While men sat in the shade with two palm- 
leaf fans in hand, drinking iced-lemonade, soda water, 
and a little rye mixed in, trying to keep cool ; and the 
women up-stairs with their m6>?5A«/'-Ai^5Z>(X7'<is on, avoid- 
ing society that they might keep from suffocating, and 
tiie young men emigrating to the " sand hills" at night 
to escape mosquitoes and malaria, I waded through 
the streets of that burning, broiling city under the 
fierce rays of the July and August sun, with much 
inspiration and a great deal more perspiration, and 
made in the neighborhood of fifteen dollars per day. 

One way to keep cool, is not to stay long enough in 

one place to get hot— keep moving. I moved — a man 

who has to educate himself and make the money dur- 

vacation must move ; he has no time to get hot. 



How I Got My Education. yr 

It took just five thousand words to show my work, 
and to get a man to take that in, it must be given to 
him in quick doses. 

I called on a gentleman down town and asked his 
permission to show him the work. 

" Well," said he, " you can show it to me, but I 

don't believe in your Bibles and religions no way 

they aint no good. I don't belong to any church and 
never expect to — there's no creed under the sun I be- 
lieve in." 

But I knew better, so I commenced on him thus : 
" This is Hitchcock's Analysis of the Holy Bible, or 
the whole of the Old and New Testaments arranged 
according to subjects, in twenty-seven books, together 
with Cruden's Concordance to the Holy Scriptures re- 
vised and edited by John Eadie, D. D., expressly for 
the Analysis. The Analysis is by Eoswell D. Hitch- 
cock, D. D., LL. D., President of the Union Theo- 
logical Seminary, ISTew York. The subjects are di- 
vided into twenty-seven different books, such as 
Scripture, God, Jesus Christ, Idolatry and Supersti- 
tion, Works of God, Mediums and Methods of Kev- 
elation, Duties to God, Angels, Good and (I'll be 
d — if I believe anything you are saying) Evil, the 
Family, Fallen Man, Man Redeemed, Hell, Heaven, 
The Judgment. Here are two hundred and fifty 
chapters, twenty-three hundred sections, six thousand 



^2 How I Got My Education. 

subjects, an Interpreting Dictionary, a Pronouncing 
Dictionary, Scripture Measures, Weights and Coins, a 
Family Record, History of the Bible, (that's the only 
good thing in it — with an oath) and a Dictionary of 
all Religious Denominations, Sects, Parties and Asso- 
ciations in the World !" 

All this was said in about a minute. When I showed 
him the " Dictionary of the Different Denominations" 
he said, with a double oath : 

" Now, sir, please show me my sect of people and 
I'll buy a book." 

" Yery good,'' said I, and turning to it I read : 

'^Yezides, from Yezid, founder of their Religion^ 
called also Devil Worshippers — a singular people 
found in TurMsh Armenia {more than 200,000), in 
Khoordistan {about 4,000), and in soms other locali- 
ties^ who treat the Devil with scrupulous respect he- 
cause they anticipate his restoration to heaven where 
they wish to have him for a friendP 

When I got through, he said : 

" That's my sect ; I'll take a book." 

All men have creeds and beliefs and doctrines ; most 
of them believe in God. There is no unbelief, 

"Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod 
And waits to see it push away the clod, 
He trusts in God. 
" Whoever says, when clouds are in the sky, 
Be patient heart, light breaketh by and by, 
Trusts the Most Hie:h. 



How I Got My Education. yj 

"Whoever sees, 'neath winter field of snow, 
The silent harvest of the future grow, 
God's power must know. 

" "Whoever lies upon his couch to sleep, 
Content to lock each sense in slumber deep, 
Knows God will keep. 

" Whoever says, 'To-morrow,' 'The Unknown,' 
' The future,' trusts that power alone 
He dares disown. 

" The heart that upward looks when eyelids close, 
And dares to live when life has only woes, 
God's comfort knows. 

" There is no unbelief, 
For day by day and night unconsciously, 
The heart lives by that faith the lips deny, 
God knoweth why !" 

Never pay any attention to what a man says about 
his belief. Preach the word in season and out of 
season, something will strike him, and you'll win him 
over. 

The summer is waning ; the nights are more pleas- 
ant; the days are less boiling; business has been ele- 
gant, thirteen hundred dollars' worth of books have 
been sold to believers and non-believers. 

I am nearer the ocean now than ever before, why 
should I not see it ? 

It is just a week after an awful storm has swept the 
Atlantic coast from Florida to Maine. The dead 
bodies of rice-farm servants are floating in mid-ocean. 



y^ How I Got My Education. 

Savannah is a mere brush-heap, interspersed with tin 
roofing blown from the dwellings. Tjbee Island 
peeps out from beneath the debris and white sand of 
over rolling waves. 

Everybody along the coast is drinking salt water, 
because of the mighty incoming of the tide. Tow- 
boats and schooners and fishing gulls and little sail 
boats stand on end, half-buried in the marsh, along 
the harbor. Men are hauling cord-wood and burning 
brush from the ruins of magnolias and cape jasmines. 
The storm is hushed into silence, and the elements 
look on the scene of destruction with an air of perfect 
innocence. 

How bright and beautiful the early days of this 
September morning. I step upon a little tow-boat 
that expects to cross the bar and leave a ship to find 
its way to South America. 

The sunbeams kiss the silvery waves of the Savan- 
nah as they waltz around the little steamer ; the gen- 
tle zephyrs ift the white foam and dash it into a 
thousand glittering particles over the tottering little 
puller. 

The floating clouds that promenade the horizon to- 
ward the East beckon us toward the music of the roll- 
ing deep. Chuck-a-chu, chuck-a chu, chuck-a-chu, 
chuck-achu, goes the little propeller, and the great 
vessel with its mighty cargo follows. We cross the 



How I Got My Education, 75 

bar and the breeze strikes the sails of the old ship ; she 
rides upon the waters like a thing of life. 

" Halt, up, down, round, sidewise, around and 
around ! Oh ! splash ! dash ! asuh ! bouah ! My 
h-e-a-d hnr-hur-t-s me clean down to my — Oh ! heels, 
ooh ! booh ! Give my pocket-knife — augh ! — to my 
little brother ! boo ! hoo — hem ! — and my chewing 
gum to my youngest sister — augh ! Oh ! C-a n-t you 
8-q-u-e-e-z-e a 1-e-m-o-n i-n some water and let me pass 
off easier f 

"You're feeling badly, aint you ?" said the Captain. 

"Do-o o-n't apk a dy-in-g man such a question as 
that, and tantalize his s-o-u-1 — ough ! — in that style. 
B-a-a-d is no name for it ! ! !" 

Traveling is a good thing for a young man. What- 
ever is in him is pretty sure to come out — if he rides 
on a stormy sea. 



CHAPTER Y. 

MY TRIP TO VIRamiA. 



Five long years of toil, weary waiting and anxiety, 
had glided by since I had said "Good-bye, Blue Ridge 
Mountain Home." 

None but a fond mother and loving sisters can fully 



J 6 How I Got My Education. 

appreciate the many heart-aches and heart-throbs ex- 
perienced bj a strange boj seeking his goal in a strange 
land. To them he owes much for sympathy, of which 
the outside world knows nothing. 

The summer with all its heated labors is over ; cool, 
balmy September draws its mantle of eloquence and 
poetry about me. The cars stand under the shed at 
the Union Depot ; one long, loud whistle, seeming to 
sound half-way across the continent, stirs one anxious 
heart. The weary boy ascends the steps of the mov- 
ing train, lays himself down to sleep in Georgia and 
wakes up in Virginia ! 

Home again ! Heaven bends with all its blessings 
to welcome back the prodigal boy ! 

The old weeping willow droops its mournful head 
in humble silence at his coming. The cool, bubbling 
spring reflects the same bright, happy faces it did the 
Sunday evening he quaffed his last cooling draught 
from its crystal fountain. The old mountain branch 
sings the same sweet song it did the day he crossed it 
and said, "Sing songs to my mother in my absence." 
The blue-eyed Massanutten Mountain looks down 
through the thin gauze of a beautiful September day 
with its dreamy eyes and says, "I have stood here in 
all thy absence and watched over thy cottage home. 
I have stretched my shadowy wings to shield thy loved 
ones from the scorching rays of a mid-summer's sun^ 



Ho%v I Got My Education. yy 

and from the stormy blasts of December's darkest 
days." 

The pure mountain air that steals in among the ce- 
dars whispers the same holy prayer it did when first 
the youth bowed around the family altar to pay his 
devotions to the God of his fathers. 

How inadequate are words and sentences to express 
the feelings of a returning wanderer, as he drinks in 
the sweets of a beloved and happy home ! 

The boy throws himself down on the green turf, 
under the willow by the spring, and all he can utter 
from the great deep of his soul is ''God is love P' 

The clearest view we can possibly get, though dim 
it may be, of the home in "Our Father's House," must 
be to enjoy the blessings of a sweet Christian earthly 
home. That is really and truly akin to heaven. 

My little cottage home stood there in all its attract- 
iveness, just as it did five years previous. No dark 
shadows had fallen across the doorway to mar the 
happiness of him who had been so long absent. How 
many bright fiowers had been culled from the bouquets 
of other homes and family circles since I had left 
mine ! But Providence had dealt so kindly with 
those I loved that not to be grateful would have been 
to have proved untrue to my better nature. 

Now, where do you think I first stopped when I 
arrived in Virginia ? 



y8 How I Got My Education. 

At the little village of L — . Getting off at the 
station, I took nay valise in hand and marched up to 
the familiar mansion where I had spent three years of 
my early life so pleasantly, and before Pauline knew 
of my arrival I stood once more in her presence. 

What her thoughts were then could be imagined 
only by the alternate blushes and smiles that played 
upon her comely face. 

No one would have dreamed, from her bright face, 
that Clarence had pressed his suit in my absence, had 
been successful, and before the happy day had ar- 
rived had suddenly died. But that was even so. 
Clarence Morton had found a premature grave, and 
had left Pauline without a special lover. 

Yet there were no traces of sorrow on her young, 
joyous face that September evening, as I stood before 
her, after the long absence of five years. 

Perhaps there was some additional attraction about 
me. I wore a long-tail coat and heavy moustache ; had 
been to college, studied Geography (Georgia winters) 
and Rhetoric ; had learned beautiful sentences which 
breathed forth eloquent climaxes — 

"Ola dear, oh dear, what shall I do ? 
I've lost my wife and seed-corn too !" 

Had studied the languages (not much, though), was 

familiar with 

"Amo, amas, amat ;" 

and 



'How I Got My Education. yn 

could converse with my sweet-heart in German — 

"O bleib* bei mir iind geh' nicht fort, Om meinen 
herzen ist der schonste ort." I had been out of hear- 
ing of mj mother's dinner-horn, had seen the white 
cotton Selds of the South, and heard the sweet songs 
of the mocking bird, mosquito and sand-fly. 

Kow was a good time to bring my powers to bear 
upon the fair maiden again. 

Many were our rambles over the clover fields and 
through the orchards, gathering the rich, golden fruit 
that was so fast ripening in the glowing sun of that 
lovely autumn. 

Church services, pic-nics, camp meetings, Yorktown 
Centennials were taken in by us. Our constant asso- 
ciation with each other brought back the dream of 
early love, and the vision of Rosa Hawthorne faded 
from my memory like the dew before the morning 
sun. 

" Absence conquers love." I had been absent from 
Kosa a few days, in- the presence of Pauline, and I 
was clear gone. 

Many of Virginia's beauties I had never seen, and 
I must now avail myself of the opportunity to see 
some of her wonders. 

The first place I visited was Weyer's Cave, one of 
Virginia's historical attractions, a few miles south of 



3o How I Got My Education, 

Port Republic, in against one of the small spurs of 
the Blue Ridge system, and about seventeen miles 
north of Staunton, in Augusta county, is this won- 
derful cavern. Stopping at the residence of the 
owner of this cave, about a half mile from its entrance, 
we procured a guide, and, winding up to its mouth, 
we entered to behold what nature had done beneath 
the earth's surface. 

A chill creeps over one upon entering, and he feels 
an intensity of awe as he looks beyond the dim, flick- 
ering light into the profound darkness that spreads 
its impenetrable gloom in the distance. 

But a good guide, with the proper attendants to 
point out the road and reveal the beauties that stand 
like ghosts in their fairy-like abodes, is the delight of 
the visitor. 

Passing down a long descent, we came to the Ghost 
Chamber, at each end of which two single, mute, 
stark-white sentinels stand as though they were guard- 
ing and receiving the countersis^nfrom passing spirits. 

A few paces forward, and down a rude flight of 
some twenty steps, we reach the Cataract, seemingly 
a waterfall petrified in its leap over the precipice. 
The sudden stillness of this hushed Niagara makes 
one feel that he had been suddenly ushered into the 
presence of the green waters of the true cataract, and 
found it taking a quiet nap. 



How I Got My Education. 8l 

Leaving this grand representation we come sud- 
denly into the presence of a political scene. There is 
the Senate Chamber, with the speaker's chair, the 
desks of the honorable members, and above all, at one 
side in the gallery, fenced round with a fanciful rail- 
ing, over which seemingly peep and peer the heads of 
listening visitors. 

Then comes the Cathedral, from the center of which 
hangs the fanciful resemblance of a beautiful chande- 
lier, and above it rises the pulpit, an elevated desk 
covered with the most graceful folds of white dra- 
pery, and the ceiling literally covered with glittering 
crystals and sparkling stalactites, dropping in long 
points and broad, wavy sheets of milky whiteness ; 
others of a muddy red, bordered with white or with 
the darker cornelian shades of the Piedmont brown. 

On and on, from one beauty to another th& visitor 
is led, while the guide tells his tale and reveals the 
similarity of three strangely formed objects to those 
we have seen by the light of the sun on the surface of 
the earth. 

Washington's Hall, with its high ceiling of ninety 
feet, and its immense length of two hundred and fifty 
feet, with a large statue draped in courtly robes stand- 
ing in the center of this spacious apartment, fills one 
with thoughts too grand for utterance. 

We begin our expressions of wonder and surprise, 



82 How I Got My Education. 

and leave them unfinished, just as nature seems to 
have done in her freaks in this intensely beautiful 
palace ! 

The thing that most especially struck my fancy was 
the " bridal veil," a most splendid sheet of white, glit- 
tering, translucent spar, which seemed thrown over a 
hat or the back of a large tuck comb and hung in long 
wavy folds, almost reaching the clay-red floor of this 
chamber. 

I looked and looked, but alas ! alas ! in vain, the 
hride was not there, and I availed myself of the oppor- 
tunity to say to a fair ma^iden who stood by me, that 
now would be a good time to enact another bridal 
scene, but she wouldn't be bridled. 

Thus it is we are led from narrow passages to wider 
and more extended apartments, over precipices and 
tumbling pilasters, glittering stalactites and crystal 
fountains, till one is so lost in wonder and amazement 
that he wishes for daylight to reveal whether or not he 
has left this terrestrial globe. 

Weyer's Cave is really one of the wonders of the 
new world, and is considered as such by all who view 
it in the light in which I saw it that glad day. A 
dozen pages could not fully describe the attractions of 
this wonderful place, so I pass on. 

Among Yirginia's wonders of recent date, are the 
Lurav and New Market " endless caverns," the latter 



How I Got My Education, 8j 

of which I was permitted to visit. Just a few differ- 
ences 1 notice between this and Weyer's Cave. 

In the New Market endless caverns, situated about 
three miles south-east of New Market, near the Mas- 
sanutten Mountain, there is the additional beauty of 
newness. None of the exquisite formations have 
been effaced by the hand of the tourist, nor smoked 
up by the torch ; all is clear, bright and sparkling ; 
moreover it is acknowledged by visitors, that this 
cave possesses one beauty that none other has — the 
"Diamond Lake." 

The mode of access to this attractive place is very 
difficult on account of an exceedingly narrow passage, 
the shelving rocks coming so near together as to ne- 
cessitate crawling on the hands and knees to reach it, 
and finally to lie down and snail it for a few feet. 

But ah ! when it is once reached, you are amply re- 
paid for all your trouble. The treat is worth crawl- 
ing a mile to behold, it is such a wonder. 

The little lake is about ten feet square and about a 
foot deep, with perhaps six inches of water clear as 
crystal ; up through this water peep a million spark- 
ling diamond stalagmites. 

When the guide struck a match and lighting a mag- 
nesium ribbon held it over this fairy fountain, the 
sweet voice of a lovely female, sounding from the en- 
trance through which I just had crawled, asked me if 



8^ How I Got My Education, 

I would not like to live there always. With her, I 
could have stood it awhile, but it would have been 
too damp around the ed^es to have remained long. To 
fully appreciate this beautiful scene one must make a 
comparison. 

On some mountain during the night it snows ; the 
snow is heavy and it rests on the limbs and bushes ; 
before day-dawn the clouds pass off and it becomes 
cold and clear, a heavy frost settles on each separate 
limb and twig and particle of snow ; the sun rises and 
sending its beams through these natural lenses, forms 
a million sparkling diamonds, making one vast, glit- 
tering, sparkling, spangled chandelier. 

If you have seen this, you get a faint idea of what 
the Diamond Lake is in the New Market endless cav- 
erns. It beggars farther description. 

Many were the pleasant visits I made on my trip to 
Yirginia. But a month's deep, holy associations with 
loved ones, with its recreative powers of mind, body 
and soul, and I turn again toward my new home in 
the land of the sunny South. 

Taking with me my sister, Pauline and several 
other ladies, I came by Yorktown, the birth-place of 
our nation, and trod the holy ground where once our 
fathers fought for liberty and conquered. 

It was a grand place ; grand, though, only in imag- 
ination, for it consisted simply of the old St. John's 
church, a few bar rooms, and — dust ! ! 



How I Got My Education. 8$ 

We were there in a common cause and were all on 
an equality — all equally dusty, no distinction of color 
because of the dust. 

But this, indeed, is the celebration of a notable time 
in the history of our republic. Standing on the 
heights looking over the river, white with the sails of 
almost every nation on the globe, each flag playing in 
one common breeze of liberty, the variegated curtain 
of a hundred years parted, and I gazed down the vista 
of the past, and beheld with amazement the mighty 
contrast. 

Seventeen hundred and eighty-one, an infant nation 
just born ! 

Eighteen hundred and eighty-one, a giant in full 
glory ! 

The old ship of state has ridden well the current 
over the breakers, and as she sails into the broader 
and deeper seas, she has enlarged her rigging, spread 
her full sails, and so she will skim the wide waste of 
waters till she anchors on the placid surface of eternal 
peace, the pride of the world — America ! 

Coming back by Richmond, we found the Fair in 
progress, and the girls concluded to stay. So I had to 
say good-bye to Pauline once more. 

But this was not half so sad as our former separa- 
tion. I had a sweetheart if I stayed, and one if I did 
not stay. So I said, " Good-bye to you all — Miss Pan- 



S6 How I Got My Education. 

line," and shaking her hand tenderly, and looking at 
her very closely in the mouth I was gone again to Jive 
on hope — Oh, hope ! 

*• Hope springs eternal in the human breast." 

I wasn't married, but always hoped to be. 

The next place I touched was the Atlanta Cotton 
Exposition. 

They had guide-books there but I didn't buy any. 
They had vegetable-ivory needle cases, plush pin- 
cushions, rattles, whistles, incubators and the Little 
World ; cross-eyed darning needles, left-handed gim- 
lets and pocket saw mills, but E did not invest. 

But I tell you what I did buy. A sharp Yankee 
found out, somehow, that I was a college student, and 
he said : 

''This way, my friend." 

I went. Patting me on the shoulder, he said : 

" Aint your eyes somewhat affected by hard study ? 
Don't they pain you, and get very tired at night after 
poring over your books till eleven and twelve o'clock 
at night ? 

(I tell you that sounded mighty refreshing.) I said : 

" W-e-1-1, y-e-s, I — I believe they do." 

'* I thought so," said he, " you look like a hard stu- 
dent." 

(Oh ! that touched me all over.) Then he said, 

" I've got the best eye-glass you ever saw; it will 
rest your eyes like a top." 



How I Got My Education, 8y 

(He had hold of some Emory boys before, and knew 
who he was talking to this time.) I said, 

"My friend, do you think one pair with a nice little 
black cord will be sufficient for my o-v-e-r-w-o-r-k-e-d 
eyes ?" 

"Yes, if you wear them carefully and shade your 
left eye with your hat rim pulled down on one side, 
and carry your cane under your left arm, and hold 
your head a little to one side. This pair at two dol- 
lars and a quarter will suit you very nicely." 

"All right," said I, "I'll take them." 

I wore those glasses that day — those resters — and 
gave them away to the first old maid school teacher I 
met who wanted to look learned. A man must pay 
for his education, sure. 

But I made a bigger bust than that at the Atlanta 
Exposition (I hussed the wrong girl). 

Walking arm in arm with one of my college mates, 
taking in things generally, 1 suddenly passed a beau- 
tiful young lady, brown-eyed, dark, wavy tresses and 
fair to look upon, with unusually familiar-looking 
face. 

I stopped suddenly and said to my friend, 

"Joe, I know that woman, but where I have seen 
her I cannot tell." 

I studied and thought till all of a sudden it came 
into my mind that it was my friend, Miss Irene Rose- 



8S How I Got My Education. 

dale, who had accompanied me through the New Mar- 
ket Endless Caverns, and whose brown eyes had 
haunted me like a pleasant dream ever since. I 
turned from Joe Quillian to speak to the passing 
maid, but alas ! she had gone from my presence like a 
June-bug from a 'tater vine. The rest of that day I 
put in looking for the brown-eyed maiden until hope 
had fled. 

But late in the afternoon, in the Art Gallery, I sud- 
denly came up with the fair miss, and in my joy I 
took off my hat, approached her as gracefully as a 
dancing master, extended my hand and bowed low. 
She clasped my hand tenderly in her white hand, and 
smiled as sweetly as an infant's laugh. Then I said in 
warm tones, 

"How do you do ?" 

She smiled louder, and then I said again, 

^'This is my friend. Miss Irene, of Yirginia, 1 be- 
lieve ?" 

Then I saw a kind of half surprise and half sorrow 
and half joy, mingled with about one-sixteenth disgust, 
play "hide and seek" among the roses and dimples in 
her pretty cheeks. She said, 

"You are mistaken, sir," — (though she was really 
the miss taken for another). 

Well, I bowed, stepped back and said, 

"Excuse me, if you please." 



How 1 Got My Education. 8^ 

I was sorry I was mistaken, but very glad I had 
made the mistake. It did m6 good to shake hands 
with so pretcy a girl and see her blush because she 
had done so without an introduction, 

I have often wondered who and where and when 
and how she is, but never a line has she ever written 
me since I made her acquaintance in the Art Gallery 
at the Atlanta Exposition that beautiful October 
evening in '81. Friendships made on short acquaint- 
ance sometimes last but briefly. 

On to Oxford I went and fell in line with my class 
and met the regular duties of a college life, with its 
sunshine and its show, its hopes and its fears, its joys 
and sorrows, filling up another college year with the 
study of text-books and writing letters to Pauline. 
Letters to and from the little village of L — came and 
went rapidly, and the carelessness upon my part, in the 
multiplicity of business, became a little too monoto- 
nous to the independent disposition of Rosa Haw- 
thorne. 

Rosa's soft blue eyes and gentle disposition did not 
divest her of womanly independence, and no one was 
more ready to resent and mildly rebuke an injury than 
she. 

She brought me to taw about my carelessness and 
because I could not answer satisfactorily she said, 
"We will play *quits.' " Well, we just quit, and that 



go How I Got My Education. 

ended the matter. A handsome young doctor was 
paying his devotions to Rosa, and she was as inde- 
pendent of me as I Was devoted to Pauline. 

Love matters get wonderfully mixed up, anyway. 
They are as uncertain as the color of a next spring's 
style of dress goods. 



CHAPTER YI. 

ON THE HO AD. 

This is a progressive age. In the world's busy 
thoroughfare, men and things are moving rapidly. 
The day of active business life is upon us, a day when 
the false theory of *'luck" has given way to energy, 
mental and physical action. 

The time for taking in school at sunrise and teach- 
ing till dark is gone with the things of old fogyism. 
The six-horse teams with the great red wagon body 
filled with bacon and flour, on the road to market a 
month, no longer claims the time and taxes the patience 
of the farmer. A week's transactions of former days 
are now performed in a few hours. Railroads, steam- 
ships, telegraphs, telephones, bicycles, tricycles and 
one wheel buggies have so connected the commercial, 
social, political and religious world that all are now 
neighbors. 



How I Got My Education, p/ 

The farmer raises his products and sells them in 
some distant market without leaving his home. The 
South Georgia truck farmer grows early and late 
watermelons, and sends chills and fever to every city 
in the North without leave or license. 

The retail merchant buys his goods from the whole- 
sale merchants without either leaving their places of 
business. 

The day of round-eyed axes, flails, sickles and spin- 
ning jennies have gone forever. This is a fast age, 
and men to succeed must be active and wide awake. 

America builds churches, colleges, almshouses, and 
preaches the gospel in China and Mexico and Japan 
without one out of a million seeing the land of the 
heathen. The white bear of the North cordially 
shakes the alligator of the South by the tail, and they 
call each other neighbor. 

As much of the labor as possible is performed by 
the men who stand at the head of their particular 
callings, and then when help is needed they seek the 
best material possible to transact their business. 
Young men, nowadays, to be useful must be educated 
men, not only theoretically but by practical observa- 
tion, and a close study of what now moves the world. 

Business — and when I say business I mean every- 
thing, even selling a hooh — is done on the wing, and 
those who are not good marksmen will stand but little 



02 How I Got My Education. 

chance for any game. The commercial world needs 
first-class business men, for most of the business is 
now done on the road. 

There is or has been a false theory which prevails 
among many good people with . regard to men who 
transact business on the road and are called '' drum- 
mers" or "agents." 

In the first place, they do not know what kind of 
people the general class are, whom they are continu- 
ally abusing. True, some few men who travel justly 
merit the name of *'wag," "sharper," "second-class 
man," "tramp," etc., audit; is this few out of the 180,- 
000 traveling men of the country, who have perhaps 
lowered this class in the eyes of the local traveler. 

It is unfair to judge so many by the exceptional 
few. Because some preachers do wrong, does that 
degrade all ministers ? Because some merchants fail 
with full pockets, and cheat their creditors, is mer- 
chandising no longer respectable ? 

Would that the intelligent world were charitable 
enough to consider who the great body of this trav- 
eling class are ! The question will soon be asked no 
longer, when the bus starts to the train, " Are you 
going for a gentleman or a drummer V 

The men who travel now are men of intelligence 
who represent wealth and influence ; men travel who 
are the heads of the largest banking, mining, railroad 



How I Got My Education. pj 

and commercial firms in the United States. Mer- 
chants and merchants' sons travel ; bankers and bank- 
ers' son 3 travel; publishers and publishers' agents 
travel ; ministers, lawyers and physicians travel, and 
transact their business from one end of the continent 
to the other. 

Because one umbrella tramp comes along, takes your 
silk umbrella to put a new rib in it and never returns 
it, don't class all traveling men as such. 

Young men of the first families have spared neither 
time, talent nor money in preparing themselves for 
the great business which is done on the road, and, as 
a rule, none but first-class men can fill these impor- 
tant positions. A second-class man soon loses his 
place and has to seek a commoner position in the busi- 
ness circles. One kind of business is just as honora- 
ble as another, and sometimes more so, just so it is 
honest, though it be nothing but selling a book. 

If we could only learn the lesson that " whatever is 
worth i^doing at all is worth doing well," there would 
be less discredit reflected upon many callings, and less 
failure in working out the great problem of life. 

If a man is so unfortunate as to have the lowest and 
meanest occupation life can afford, it is his duty to 
make the standard of thac particular calling the very 
highest that his most skillfully exerted powers can 
make it. If his profession be that of a boot-black, 



QA How I Got My Education. 

then'his greatest success lies in the power to persuade 
men that the very highest type of gentility demands 
that they patronize him. When he does this, and 
does the best job his skill can do, he makes that busi- 
ness a success. 

If a boy's early life be that of a " newsboy," then 
he should learn what is in his paper and strive to im- 
press upon every passer-by, whether he be lord or 
slave, that what he fails to read in this paper he may 
never see in another. When he learns to do this he 
has the secret of success in that occupation. 

But if, on the other hand, a man has been more 
favorably situated, and had kind fortune to smile 
upon him, lift him up from the commoner walks of 
men and things, and exalt him to that high position 
so few attain ; if she has bestowed upon him the 
marked distinction which the honor of being a book- 
agent brings to her favored few, why surely he has, 
above all^men, a work of incalculable ipagnitude, and 
should fill with proficiency his worthy position, that 
his character in puch a profession may reflect credit 
on all who come after him. 

I have learned not to look down with scorn and de- 
rision upon a man in the commoner walks of life, no 
matter where I find him. Though he be but an hum- 
ble lawyer or a politician, I know that, aside from the 
many heart-aches and heart-throbs that come in the 



How I Got My Education, pj 

disappointments of clients and offices, there are many 
green oases in the great desert of this life, where he 
may rest and eat his pone, which those in higher 
places, on account of the multiplicity of orders, and 
the countermanding of orders, and the " I-don't-want 
your-books," never experience. These men of com- 
moner professions scarcely ever have to come so 
intimately in contact with the busy current of active 
life, they know not :>i what the world is made. 

But if a man wants to know what he wished he haii 
not known, let him wade out into the current of life, 
into the busy thoroughfare of men and things, and 
turn his face toward the source of the stream, and, in 
this condition of human events, meet men with small 
satchels and magazines, newspapers and chromos, and 
insurance policies and lightning rods, and analyses and 
patent churns, and patent bustles and patent corn 
medicine, and patent bustles and patent eye-wash, and 
men with big trunks and men with little trunks, and 
"Mark Twain on the Mississippi," and the Life of 
John Brown, and the New Eevision, and then — if he 
don't smell sulphur about his garments, he is grit. 

Filling a position on the road is an important call- 
ing, if it be but to sell a book. Most any one-horse 
clerk can stand behind the counter and measure off 
calicoes and weigh out hog and hominy to parties who 
want such things ; but to sell a man, and especially a 



^6 How I Got My Education. 

woman, a thing which they at first declare they do 
not want, is that part of business which discloses the 
secret of success. 

In the first place they must go where business calls 
— through heat and cold, through sunshine and show- 
er, sick or well, in the face of opposition and fierce 
competition. The motto to be written over the door of 
the man who goes on the road, and which greets his 
eye every morning is, " go ! go ! g-o-o-o ! ! !" 

One poor fellow who started out with a line of sam- 
ples, found that every place he went some one else had 
just been there with the. same line of goods. He wrote 
to his house that if some one was not just ahead of him 
selling the same kind of goods, he could do well. The 
house wrote him to pull on, as there were eight thou- 
sand just behind him. I have actually made twenty 
dollars some rainy day while others were smoking ci- 
gars and waiting for the *' clouds to roll by." Go ! 
go ! go ! is the secret of success to the agent or trav- 
eling man. 

The next best thing is to " possess thy soul in pa- 
tience." There are many things going to and fro, up 
and down in the world, and if you are not a Job, you 
will lose your track. One often becomes worried, 
fatigued and tired of his way, sits down by the way- 
side to rest and wishes he had never entered the field. 
Some fool stands by the lists as the successful knight 



Hoiv I Got My Education. pjr 

passes, and cries " hold ! there are no laurels for you ; 
there is nothing worth your efforts,'' when in real- 
ity he knows nothing about it, he has never been in 
the arena himself, has never made an effort worthy of 
success. But you will meet with this class all along 
your route. 

Then comes your pleasant acquaintance with the 
railroad and Uvery stables. 

Railroads are good things. They do much for us in 
the way of quick passage and fast freight. But it re- 
ally seems that sometimes the railroad forgets that we 
are as much benefit to them as they are to us. Keally, 
we could live without railroads, but they could not 
live without us. They seem to forget ttiat when they 
are dealing with a traveling man. 

Now, anybody is allowed one hundred and fifty 
pounds of baggage, whether he be a traveling man, 
tourist, or free negro. But men who transact busi- 
ness for railroads are scrupulously conscientious about 
baggage if it looks like it belongs to a traveling man. 
If he thinks it weighs one hundred and fifty-one 
pounds, he has it weighed and charges double first- 
class rates on that one pound, and asks the traveling 
man to help weigh it. 

They check your baggage to a certain place, carry it 
on, keep it a week, then " cuss" you for not having fol- 
lowed it up. They carry your goods on to another 



q8 How I Got My Education. 

town because your name looks like some other man's, 
and when you make them bring it back they get mad 
because your name was not something else. 

They forget that traveling men buy their tickets 
at the office and pay for them as others do, and pay 
for excess of baggage as other people do. But they 
say, "Oh! he's a drummer, and hasn't time to argue 
with us; we will treat him as we please. He's a nui- 
sance, anyway." 

They forget that the traveling man does more for 
the railroads than any other class of people who travel. 
Thousands, yea, millions of tons of freight are going 
to and fro over these roads which have been sold by 
the drummer. They get the benefit of his labors and 
then "cuss" him for the little hand valise that fUs by 
him on the seat. 

Showmen come through the country, charter their 
cars, get reduced rates, pass through once, and drain 
the country from mountain to sea coast, yet the rail- 
road authorities can't see the difference between the 
two classes. 

Then you've got to walk the chalk, I tell you. If 
you ask any of them a question he will snap your head 
off. 

Then, again, if a man gets too hot, which he often 
does in the summer time in a close car, and pulls his 
coat, shoes and socks, and washes his feet and hangs 



How I Got My Education. pp 

his socks up to dry on the seat in front by the side of 
a bride and groom, why they get hopping mad, pull 
the rope, ring the bell, blow the whistle, and actually 
jput Jiiin right out ! in a swamp, too, among the frogs, 
sandflies and mosquitoes, leaving him to find his way 
to the next station as best he can. • 

When a poor tramp, tired and weary, wants to steal 
a little ride in an old guano car, they run off the 
track and scare him nearly to death. If he gets on 
the truck under a car, in order to ride to the next sta- 
tion, they pull him out because he "might fall and 
stain the track with blood." 

If a man is tired and sleepy, and lies down on the 
seat and puts his muddy feet up on the nice cushions, 
the conductor comes along and wakes him up, right 
in the midst of his most pleasant dreams. Oh! what 
cruel men ! ! ! 

Then they won't let a nice old lady smoke her 
sweet scented pipe (that hasn't been burnt out for 
three years) unless she goes into the smoking car, and 
she's too timid for that, and so the "poor old critter" 
has to go all day long without a smoke. Ah me ! 
there's a judgment day coming for all such — old 
women. 

Then come hotels, boarding houses and restaurants. 
It sometimes seems that people think that anything, at 
any time and any place, is good enough for a "drum- 
mer" and too good for a hook agent. 



100 How I Got My Education, 

I am often reminded of Sut Lovingood's first ser- 
mon, when he said, "Stop not whar thar am a sign, 
but gird up your coat tail and marvel f udder, lest you 
lose your soul a cussin and have your paunch eat into 
a thousand pieces.'' 

They light you to bed with a small piece of tallow 
candle, and wait till you retire to get the stump to 
make gravy for breakfast ; and put bugs in the bed 
that you may rise early so they can have the sheet for 
a table-cloth. 

As to prices, some of them haven't any — they just 
find out how much you have and take the whole pile. 

A gentleman sat by me some time ago at a hotel 
table and fixing his eye on a plate in the center of the 
table, he said, 

" Come here, come here !'' 

*' What are you calling ?" said I. 

** That dish of butter ; it's strong enough to walk 
and soft enough to run." 

He was a daisy — so was the butter. 

A dish of chicken passed around the table and 
when it got to a drummer he said, 

" Did you have much trouble holding that dish ?" 

"No,*' said his friend, " why do you ask that ?" 

" Well, I see that it is all wing, and I thought likely 
it tried to fly away." 

Many times when you inquire of a waiter when 
things look scarce, if he has any eggs, he will say, 



Hozv I Got My Education. loi 

" Ko, boss — jess out." 

" Have you any syrup ?" 

" No, sail — jess out.'' 

" Have you any milk ?" 

" No^ sah — have some to-morrow." 

" Have you any salt and pepper V 

" No, sah — dat's out too. Oh, yes sah ; yes, sah, we 
has dat. Yes, sah — uh, ye^J, sah." 

They just have their mouth lixed for "No sah, 
jess out," and that's all they know. 

But there are many exceptions to this kind of treat- 
ment, which I would not pass unnoticed ; many 
reasons why these things mentioned sometimes occur. 
Markets are often inaccessible, vegetables scarce and 
high, good cooks hard to procure, which spoil the 
best intentions of the most honest landlord. 

Then there are a class of men who would grumble 
at the best dish that could possibly be served. They 
grumble when the coffee is hot, and when it is cold, 
drink six glasses of iced tea and complain when told 
it is out. They eat ham and eggs, beef-steak and grits, 
mutton chops and cold cabbage, light rolls and bis- 
cuits, batter-cakes and syrup — all for supper, get the 
colic in the night and then " cuss" the hotel man for 
had fare. That's hardly /a^V. 

I tell you, if hotel men get to heaven — and I hope 
they may — it will be through great trials and power- 



102 How I Got My Education. 

ful tribulations. For they have been blessed out 
enough for tough beef, strong butter, blue-john milk, 
defunct ham, tainted mutton, short rations, that won- 
derful mystery — hash, " the substance of things hoped 
for, the evidence of things not seen,'' and high prices, 
till they can almost smell brimstone in their fly-specked 
dining-rooms. 

The best thing a traveling man can do, is to be pa- 
tient and kind in disposition, remembering that he did 
not have every thing he wanted while at home, and 
if he did, his home was not infested mth the class of 
people hotel-men are constantly troubled with. 

Speak kindly to every body — white and black, red 
and yellow, male and female, and Methodist preachers. 
You don't know when you will Imve need of one of 
them. The blackest negro boy that walks the streets 
may be the one who is to bring your water, black your 
boots, and serve your hash at meals at your hotel. 

It always pays to introduce yourself plainly and af- 
fably, to the man with whom you expect to transact 
business. Always shake hands, that is, if he will 
allow you, for I remember to have introduced myself 
to a maifh in the beautiful city of Savannah, and ex- 
tended my hand to get up a current of social inter- 
course. He recoiled from me like a humming-bird 
from a tom-cat. I recoiled too, and never sought his 
acquaintance further. Jle wasn't the man I was look- 
ing for. 



How I Got My Education. loj 

A good, hearty shaking of the hand, though it be 
with an entire stranger, is a wonderful familiarizing 
medium. It brings the positive and negative togeth- 
er, and starts a current. 

" Give me the hand that is kind, warm and ready, 
Give me the clasp that is calm, true and steady; 
Give me the hand that will never deceive me, 
Give me its grasp, that I aye may believe thee. 
Soft is the palm of the delicate woman ; 
Hard is the hand of the rough, sturdy yeoman ; 
Soft palm or hard hand, it matters not — never ! 
Give me the grasp that is friendlj'- forever. 

* ' Give me the hand that is true as a brother ; 
Give me the hand that has harmed not another ; 
Give me the hand that has never forsworn it ; 
Give me the grasp that I now may adorn it. 
Lovely the palm of the fair blue-veined maiden ; 
Horn}'- the hand of the workman o'erladen ; 
Lovely or ugly, it matters not — never ! 
Give me the grasp that is friendly forever." 

Good clothes, pleasant manners, kind words and a 
bright, smiling face are worth more to a man who ex- 
pects to spend his time on the road than titles or 
riches or an illusti ious paternal ancestry. These won't 
do you much good when you wisii to get the most out 
of human nature. 

On the road ! The very mention of it brings up in 
the memory many amusing incidents. 

1 was a general agent for Hitchcock's Analysis, 



104- How I Got My Education. 

special agent for the Emory Mirror, most especial 
agent for the " Men and Women's Matrimonial Aid 
Association," and delegate to the State Sunday-school 
Convention, till you couldn't rest. 

What a hobby I had on the Emory Mirror. When- 
ever 1 started out to get subscribers, what a time I 
had! 

One bright spring evening, when the air was redo- 
lent with the perfume of peach blossoms, daisies and 
blue violets, and the birds and bees were kicking up 
generally about the beautiful weather that had so 
suddenly come, I started for Columbus to get subsori- 
hers for the Mirror {?) 

The clouds had all departed, the mist and fog which 
had been hanging like a pall for so many long, weary 
days about the horizon had all departed. I took the 
train at four o'clock and by nightfall was in the Gate 
City. 

Atlanta is a good place to pass through, no matter 
where you are bound. Always go through there if 
you want to have a good time on your trip. If you 
start out for a good time, perhaps you may not go 
any further. 

One man is always as good as another, and some- 
times better, in Atlanta, especially if he has money. 
Moreover, you will always pass for that you are worth 
there, if you aint worth much. 



How I Got My Education. lo^ 

Well, I stood under the car shed that evening with 
about my usual degree of self-conceit, thinking per- 
haps Hooked a little better than usual with my beaver^ 
kid gloves and tin-handled cane on. Presently a very 
handsome gentleman, fully as good looking as myself 
stepped up to me and said, 

" How do you do, Doctor ?" 

I bowed, extended my hand, and said, 

*^ Are you not mistaken V 

'* No, I guess not ; aint this Doctor Westmoreland?' 

Well, now, wasn't that a fix ? 1 hated to deny the 
charge, yet was afraid to own it for fear the doctor 
would find it out, and then what \ 

"No, sir, S— from Emory College'' — the next big- 
gest thing I could acknowledge. 

"Oh, a professor, I presume ?" 

Then the devil tempted me, for I was getting down 
to the bottom of things. I began to wish I had on 
an old slouch hat and a basket on my arm. I would 
have recognized the latter charge, but most of the 
professors were married and 1 feared their wives. 

Then 1 commenced interrogating my new friend* 
I always talk to people who talk to me, and sometimes 
to those who don't seem inclined to talk. 

"You're a member of the Atlanta bar ?" said I. 

"No," he replied, "I've just graduated at Med- 
ical College, north.'* 



io6 How I Got My Education, 

Ah ! Jesso 1 He thought all men were doctors be- 
cause he was one. 

Then I concluded to act doctor and called around 
to see a young lady friend whom 1 hadn't seen in 
twelve months, to inquire after her health. 

She came in the parlor looking as young and pretty 
as ever. I smiled and spoke poetically of the long 
days that had flown s'nce we had last met — of sweet- 
hearts and flirtations — and I thought by her pleasant 
smiles that I was pleasing her wonderfully, when a 
gentleman passed the parlor door and I asked the 
young lady who that was. 

"My husband — I've been married ten mouths." 

"Ah hah ! hem ! Well — y-e-s ! I-I believe I-hung 
my hat on the — the rack in the hall" (?) 

I racked away, and the next subject I was studying 
was astronomy, as I turned the corner of the City 
Hall Park, all alone. 

I went back to the car shed, took the Columbus- 
bound train, and lay down to dream of "It might have 
been" — but for another fellow. 

When I arrived in Columbus a man stepped up to 
me and asked what it would cost him for whatever I 
might be representing. I told him fifty oents. He 
said "put me down for one," and asked in a kind of 
timid, modest way what it was. I told him the "Em- 
ory Mirror." He didn't open his mouth further. I 
had been there before. 



How I Got My Education. loy 

When I returned to Oxford the editorial staff 
ficored down about forty new subscribers, but I never 
told how much fun I had on that trip, which had been 
given me for the benefit of the paper. 

During my college course the agency for the Emory 
Mirror afforded me more than a thousand miles ride, 
and much more experience as an agent, and lots of en- 
joyment. I went to Augusta, Savannah, Columbus, 
LaGrange, Cartersville and Atlanta, and received more 
than two hundred subscribers and one hundred dol- 
lars' worth of advertisements for the little college 
''Mirror.'* 

Things moved on nicely in Virginia. Pauline's 
letters were all that anyone could wish. It was more 
of real business this time than a mere sickly sentimen- 
tality. 

So many letters had been written in which the vows 
of love and the promises to be faithful had been re- 
peated, that it seemed like a mockery to still dwell on 
them. It was more of the "when ?" and "how V and 
"where ?" "Where shall we live and wherewithal 
shall we be clothed ?'' It takes a philosopher to an- 
swer these questions properly and satisfactorily. It 
remains to see whether I answered them satisfactorily to 
Pauline. 



jo8 How I Got My Education. 

CHAPTER YIl. 

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS, OR, CONTRASTED PICTURES. 

"As varied as the tinseling of a summer cloud ; as 
variegated as the leaves of an autumnal forest, are the 
hues of human impulses and human feelings." 

The sun rises in all its loveliness, adorns the world 
with garments of sparkling gold ; paints each leaf a 
different dress ; transforms every streamlet into a 
golden sash with which to wrap the world in beauty ; 
crystalizes every dewdrop into a thousand sparkling 
gems, and sends joy and gladness singing their happy 
song of love around the world. 

But ere it sinks to rest behind the western hills all 
is wrapped in thick clouds and dark shadows. The 
lightning flashes, the thunder roars, the howling storm 
plays its sad song among the trees, and nature drapes 
herself in mourning. 

Thus it is with human hearts and human feelings. 
They present one continual panoramic view of joys 
and sorrows, hopes and fears, lights and shadows. We 
reach forth and pluck the brightest rose that blooms 
beside our pathway and feel with it its hidden thorns. 
We enjoy the rif-hest fruits earth can yield and in 
them find the seeds that make a bitter taste. 



How I Got My Education. log 

We quaff the coolest draughts that sparkling founts 
distil and find in them a rude and unexpected chill. 

The scene of human events is ever changing, leav- 
ing the mind to wonder what will next transpire. 

I stood and gazed upon a beautiful human flower 
that played beside my pathway. I passed along and 
bowed to taste its sweet fragrance and view its beauty. 

I passed again, and lo ! it was gone. Its stem was 
leafless, its roots were withered, and the enclosure 
which surrounded it was broken down ! I said, 

" Frail is our joys as is yon opening flower 
That spreads its fragrant blossom to the skies ; 
Plucked by an intruder's hand, in one short hour 
Its bloom is withered and its fragrance dies." 

How varied are the pictures of human nature which 
unfold themselves and show their beauty or their re- 
pugnance to hiai who would work his weary way 
through a college course by selling a book ! 

The world often looks down upon such a character 
with cold indifference, void of charity or sympathy. 
But everything has its advantages as well as its disad- 
vantages, and there are some things to be learned 
some profit to be derived, some pleasures to be en- 
joyed, some beautiful flowers to be culled, that could 
scarcely be attained in any other vocation in life. 

For instance, had I never sold a book I might have 
lived and died without knowing hat a woman can 
sometimes really be at home when she is away. 



no How I Got My Education. 

** Missus tole me to tell ye she isn't at home." 

I might never have known that many people do not 
buy books to read but only for the pictures, or because 
some one else has bought. 

" Has your book any pictures in it ?" 

"No, madam." 

*' Well, then, I don't care for it." 

"Did Col. Brown get one of your books, Mr. Spe- 
cial Agent ?" 

"' No, sir." 

" Well, I'll not take one to-day ; I'll see you some 
other time." (After he sees Col. Brown.) 

1 might never have known that men sometimes tell 
the truth, and that women always do — sometimes, 

too. 

I mio-ht never have observed how much sjood it 
does to tell a woman her baby is pretty. 

"Oh, your child is so sweet, Mrs. Blizzard, it has 
such beautiful eyes. How sweet its disposition — re- 
ally, it's the very image of its motler." 

" Mr. S , what did you say was the price of 

your book?" 

"Ten dollars, madam." 

'' Well, I — I believe I'll take one. She will be 
large enough to read it after awhile. Oh, she's so 
sweet — te-tete-te !'' 

And I have reallv made so much of babies that I 



How I Got My Education, iii 

have learned to love the little things, if thej haint got 

sour milk on 'em. 

Had I kept the even tenor of my way in the 

humbler walks of life, free from the jars and hustles 

that agitate the world, I might never have been 

ushered into elegant parlors draped with tapestry, 

" Where the floor with tassels of fir is besprent 
Filling the room with their fragrant scent," 

ornamented with mirrors and oriental paintings, to find 
that the inmates were not able to buy a book. 

I might never have discovered that very rich peo- 
ple never read ; very poor people can't read, and that 
people in moderate circumstances always read and pay 
the preacher. 

How different are individaals with whom we are 
daily coming in contact — each character presents a 
different shade in the portrait of human nature. 

You have often seen a stereoscopic view of some 
principal street in a large city, taken instantaneously, 
what a picture it presents ! Carriage?, wagons, drays, 
buggies, 'busses, big wagons, little wagons, and dump- 
ing carts, bicycles, tricycles, and wheel-barrows, horses 
and mules, dogs and goats, men, women and children 
— black, white and yellow ; sleek beavered fellows and 
poor, ragged beggars ; cross-eyed, red-nosed men, 
freckle-faced, red-haired women ; bright, glowing 
countenances, sad and despairing faces ; the child of 



J 12 How I Got My Education. 

fashion in its elegant dress, and the " great unwashed" 
in its garments of dirt — some moving rapidly, others 
at a snail's gait ; some going east, some going west, 
some north, some south — all toward the grave ! 

What a motley scene such a picture presents. 

I have often thought, in looking upon such a scene, 
what a picture a photographed conversation would be 
to the mind's eye. To say the least of it, it would 
afford much material for thought. 

Pass swiftly down the street, if you will, and catch, 
the different conversations and intonations as they fall 
from the lips of the busy world, and remember the 
different dispositions with which you daily come in 
contact and you can but say, 

" Many men of many minds," many women of 
many fashions, many people of many passions, many 
drunkards of many drinks, many liars of many lies, 
many swearers of many swears. 

One man says, " I wish it wasn't so hot." Another 
says, " I'm glad it's no hotter." One says, " I wish I 
had something better to eat." Another, " I'm glad I 
can get what I have." 

"The rain will make mud," says one. Says an- 
other, "It will lay the dust." 

One sighs "I wish I was dead." The other, "I am 
glad I am alive." 

Everybody sees things from a different standpoint. 



How I Got My Education, iij 

If you had heard a conversation which took place 
some time ago in one of our Southern cities, it would 
have run somewhat in this way : 

"I'm a detective.'' 

^'Wellj suppose you are." 

"Aint you selling a book ?" 

"Yes, sir, you'd think so." 

"Have you a license V 

"I have not ; I don't use those things in this civil- 
ized country." 

"Well, I guess you had better go with me and see 
about the matter. 

"Well, my friend, you lay yourself liable to a fine 
of one hundred dollars or imprisonment.'' 

I just walked down to the mayor's ofiice and paid 
my twenty-five dollars without a word. I tell you it 
costs something to talk with everybody you meet — 
especially a detective. But then it pays too ; business 
is business. I just went around and took in the mayor 
and aldermen — that's business. 

"Mr., don't you want a hack ?" 

"No,'' said I, "I'm hacked now. Just paid twenty- 
five dollars for the privilege of talking. I'll hack 
somebody now." 

"Mr., don't ye want me to cah'y yo valece down fur 
ye?" 

"Down where ?" 

8 



ii/j. How I Got My Education. 

"Whah yere ^wine." 

*' Whah am I gwine f " 

"Dunnoj sah !" 

"Well, I'm going to talk a man to death ; the fun- 
eral won't take place till to-morrow." 

The scene is ever changing. In the same city the 
electric lights had created quite a sensation. They 
were beautiful things. You could see them just as 
plain, if you were close enough and the moon shone 
bright — the glass globes, you know. 

Passing up Bull street one evening, just as I ap- 
proached one of the towers, I saw a colored man 
standing on the sidewalk with hands up and eyes big 
as saucers. 1 said. 

"Uncle, how about it ?" 

"Boss, I'ze shame to own it, sah, but clar fo' God, 
I'ze bin livin' heah fifteen years, an' I'se jist bin outen 
de city fo' a fu daiz and when I kempt inter town dis 
eben it wah fifteen minits fo' I node whah I is. Daze 
liten up dem upper rejuns — an' I'ze gwine dat way, 
sho'. Yes, sah, I is." 

I rang the silver door-bell of a brown stone front 
not long since, and a servant came to the door ; I 
handed her my card and asked if I could see Mrs. 
Bonton. The servant went back, and through the 
long hall I could hear the conversation : 

" Gemmen to de do'." 



How I Got My Education. ii^ 

^' How's he dressed V 

" Yery well, mum.'' 

" What's he got ?" 

** A police, mum." 

"Guess he's a tinker. Tell him I don't want any- 
thing mended to-day. Can't see him to-day nor to- 
morrow either." 

I received the intelligence and passed down town 
thinking, 

"There's never a cup so pleasant 
But has bitter with the sweet ; 
There's never a path so rugged 
That bears not the print of feet ; 
And we have a helper promised 
For the trials we may meet. 

" There's never a garden growing 
With roses in every plot ; 
There's never a heart so hardened 
But has its tender spot ; 
We have only to prune the border 
To find the touch-me-not." 

Passing further down the street, I pulled the string 
to another bell. The servant came to the door, I 
handed her my card, and through the hall the sound 
came, 

** Mr. S , from Emory College. Ask him in the 

parlor and give him a fan ; bring in some fresh water 
and tell him I'll be there in a few minutes." 

"Howdy do, Mr. S ; you're a student at 

Emory ?" 



Ii6 How I Got My Education. 

" Yes, madam, and canvassing, during my vacation 
to get ready, financially, to go back to college. I'll 
show you my work." 

" Certainly, sir ; I'll look at it with pleasure. My 
husband and two brothers graduated there, and I am 
interested in all her interests." 

I showed it to her in first-class style, and she said, 

" I'll take it. Come to see me, Mr. S , while 

you're in the city." 

" Thank you, madam." 

And 1 went off singing, 

" There's never a way so narrow 
But the entrance is made straight ; 
There's always a guide to point us 
To the little wicket gate ; 
And the angels will be nearer 
To a soul that is desolate." 

While in Macon, I sat one evening in an office talk- 
ing to a young man, well educated, of handsome 
physique, attractive manners, and attractive withal. 
He was waiting for the wheel of fortune to turn round 
and reveal some streak of luck, I waiting for the 
clouds to pass off that 1 might make a streak. 

We talked of the past, with its disappointments of 
love as well as in fortune ; of the girls we had courted, 
tried to flirt with and got " kicked ;" of the future, 
with its hopes and prospects of success. 

Presently the clouds parted, the sun broke forth in 



How I Got My Education, IIJ 

its accustomed beauty, and the delightful evening 
addressed itself to the active mind of the business 
man. I said, 

" Good-bye, Frank, there are forts in this town that 
have not been stormed, as yet, and success is only to 
the persevering." 

"Stay longer," cried Frank ; ''the day is far spent 
and you can do but little between this and night." 

But I turned away from Frank and said to myself, 
as I picked up my valise, 

"Where thou goest, there will I not go, and 
where thou diest, there will I not be buried." 

As I passed down Poplar street I cast my eyes up 
at the old city clock that stands there day after day, 
making fun of idlers, and saw that the hand pointed 
to four o'clock. But that evening at twilight when I 
counted up my profits I found I had made fifteen dol- 
lars and nobody hurt — I was glad I was not hurt. 

Many young men forego the privilege of doing 
something for fear they will fail. The best thing a 
Chinaman ever said was that "our greatest glory was 
not so much in not failing^ but in knowing how to 
rise out of a failure." 

There are so many lights and shadows which make 
up the portrait of human nature, that one dodging in 
and out at intervals, and seeing nothing but the heavier 
dark lines, concludes that really it is an unsightly 



Ii8 How I Got My Education. 

scene ; and indeed you often have some grounds for 
thinking so. One is often discouraged in fighting 
the battle of life because he meets so much opposition. 
Some people are so crabbed, so uncouth, that really 
we sometimes wish that we had never entered the 
race and assumed the responsibilities that come in the 
business transactions of — well, say a special agent.'* 

For example, I stepped up on the portico of an ele- 
gant mansion in one of our Southern cities some time 
ago, rang the bell, sent my card in, and was presently 
ushered into a handsome parlor. 

The lady of the house entered in a few moments, 
elegantly dressed, wearing the smile of a saint, and 
addressed me in tones soft and musical. 

I rose, bowed and said, 

"This is Mrs. Wealthy, I presume." 

"Yes, sir ; keep your seat.'' 

"I am a student at Emory College, and during my 
vacation am representing a very fine work, which I 
shall take great pleasure in showing you." 

"Certainly, sir, I shall look at your work with de- 
light." 

In the most fascinating style I showed the work, 
revealing beauty after beauty, until the good lady was 
entirely enraptured with the work. She took her 
own lily-white hand and wrote her name in my order 
book — her own sweet little name. I bowed, and tell- 



How I Got My Education. no 

ing her 1 would be on hand about the twenty-fifth of 
the month, I departed. As I went off down town 
I thought of what an angel I had met. 

I ordered the book, paying for it, the freight, box- 
ing and carting, and drayage, and on the day the or- 
der was due I tripped lightly up the steps, rang the 
bell, and announced my arrival with the book. 

"I believe I don't want the book; I've changed my 
mind." 

"But, madam, I've ordered the book, and shall ex- 
pect you to take it, according to contract." 
" Yes ; but I didn't say I would take it." 
"I beg your pardon, madam, but I have your name 
in your own handwriting." 

That good (?) woman turned around, and, calling 
her husband (a man with whom I was not acquainted, 
and one whose looks were not such as to prepossess 
one in his favor) said, 

" This man has disputed my word !" (My own, 
sweet little word.) 

Then that man ! why he swelled up like a toad and 
looked as red as a turkey gobbler's snout, and doubled 
up his fists and looked at me — well, I hardly know 
how he did look, for I didn't stay long enough to see 
how he appeared. He said, 

"I'll shake your head off your shoulders if you dis- 
pute my wife's word !" 



120 How I Got My Education. 

And that sweet-spirited angel stood there and said, 
" Sic him, Tige !" Then I said, 

" My dear sir, if you do not want this beautiful 
book I will take it down the street to a man who 
wants it worse than you do — and I won't be long 
about it." 

" 1 don't care where you take it just so you don't 
dispute my wife's word !" 

Well, I skipped on the theory that " if 'twere well 
done when 'tis done, then 'twere well 'twere done 
quickly." 

As I passed down the street I said to myself, ''More 
folks have angels besides God." 

That's about as dark shading as the artist generally 
puts into a picture unless he were painting a regular 
" hog-killing" time. But there is many a beautiful, 
green oasis in the desert of a hooh agenfs life. 

For example, in the suburbs of our own Southern 
cities, near the crumbling ruins of an old college, 
stands a faded dwelling. The magnolias, cape jas- 
mines and cedar trees that stand in the yard, the half- 
dilapidated lattice fence encircling the foregrounds, 
the curved walk that leads up to the house, all tell of 
a once beautiful home. 

I stopped my buggy, and tying the horse, I entered 
the half-open gate swung back on its rusty hinges, and 
started up the walk. Not a footprint could be seen 



How I Got My Education. 121 

on the white sand that lay in the path. The autumn 
leaves lay crisp and colored with many a hue in the 
mellow light of the fall day. 

The undisturbed spider had woven his silken web 
from one column to the other with many an inter- 
lacing thread. As I walked up on the porch a hollow 
€cho greeted my ears as though the feet that trod 
these planks made never a sound. 

As I touched the knob of the door-bell it almost 
fieemed as though I had hold of the bell that would 
wake the spirits from their sleeping place ! As I 
turned the handle it screamed and grated in its rusty 
socket, and the dull, heavy twang that rang out re- 
bounded against the bare walls within. This was all 
1 could hear, and 1 turned to walk away, saying lightly 
to myself, " surely no one has been here in months." 

But I chanced to mention to a passer-by that the 
lady was not at home up in the grove. 

" Oh yes," said he, " you don't know how to enter. 
"Go back, and when you pass through the gate turn to 
the left and follow tiie path that leads round to the 
rear of the house ; there you will find a bell tied with 
a chain, ring that and go back to the front door." 

I did so, and the servant met me and conducted 
me into the sitting-room. 

There was an air of departed spirits and former 
glory, that marked every thing upon which I looked. 



122 How I Got My Education. 

I felt a strange sensation, such as one would expect to 
feel on entering the abode of a hermit. 

A door opened and in walked a rather tall female 
form, of delicate, but very graceful proportions. The 
dark brown, glossy hair already intermingled with 
threads of gray ; the heavy eye-brows and long, dark 
lashes ; the round, hazel eye, beginning to sink with 
age, and the symmetrical features of a calm, but 
thoughtful face, already plowed in furrows of sorrow 
and care, marked the -physique of a once beautiful 
woman. 

I felt that I stood in the presence of one of God's- 
chosen saints. 

I introduced myself and business, and told her the 
purpose for which I was thus laboring. She en- 
couraged me by taking my work and giving many 
words of cheer. Her life of sorrow had made her sa 
sympathetic. 

I said to myself as I went away, *' Yes, your life of 
sorrow has * worked out for you a far more exceeding 
and eternal weight of glory,' and you are the sweetest 
Christian spirit I ever saw !" 

I went away from that house a better and a happier 
boy, thinking how little of fashion and show it took 
to make the purest, happiest Christian the world ever 
knew! 

When 1 came around later in the season to deliver 



How I Got My Education, I2j 

her the work, she paid me for it and made me accept 
a note besides in token of her appreciation of mj un- 
dertaking. Thus it was by being richer, wiser, and 
better, I thanked God and took courage. 

It is in the beautiful month of October, the heated 
vacation with its arduous labors is over, eighteen hun- 
dred dollars worth of books have been sold and de- 
livered, within the short space of ninety days. Au- 
tumn has already thrown its enchanting witchery over 
the scene. The sylvan village of Oxford is all astir 
with the arrival of old and new students coming in 
for the opening of the fall term. 

Old friends, class-mates, room-mates and new faces, 
all meet in the classic grove under the shadows of the 
broad-spreading oaks, and of Seney Hall, which has 
grown to completion during the absence of the 
students. 

The senior class meet for their last autumnal term. 
They will never again come together under these 
shady oaks in this capacity, and doubtless, if ever, in 
any other — some will be missing. 

It is a joyous time to many happy hearts. To some, 
the scenes that surround them, and the bright smiles 
and joyous laughter are all new and novel — to others, it 
is merely a repetition of the delights of a college 
life. 

As the western sun gilds the fields and campus 



I2/I. How I Got My Education. 

oaks, and robes thein in garments of a myriad tints, 
a dozen groups of students can be seen standing here 
and there in the shadows that are fast lengthening, 
some busily engaged in the business of secret society 
matters, others discussing the pleasures of the past 
and prospects for the future. 

The mosquito plays around the end of one's nose as 
though he wished to be happy, too, and form some 
kind of secret society alliance with the brotherhood of 
man. 

The mocking bird is trilling its last sweet notes as 
the bright day dies away into soft fairy-like twilight. 

The lamp lights are beginning to glow from the 
kitchen and dining-room windows of the boarding 
houses. The soft zephyrs steal gently up from the 
ocean through the dark screen foliage and mingle with 
the happy laughter of the dispersing groups. A few 
linger on the steps of Seney Hall, just under the old 
clock that peals forth its sonorous music every thirty 
minutes. 

These are friends, members of a mystical brother- 
hood, bound together by ties of love and affection. 
Each is inquiring after the happiness and prosperity 
of the others. 

G. — " Well, S , what has been your success 

financially this vacation ?" 

S. — " The best I ever had, thank vou." 



How I Got My Education. I2§ 

H. — " S , how much did you really make V 

S. — "I don't know exactly — I know I did well and 
had a good time besides." 

T. — " Say, old fellow, how about your White Oak 
Camp-meeting sweetheart ?" 

S.— "Oh, she busted me." 

H. — "How about your Atlanta girl ?" 

S. — "She played the wild with me, too." 

All.— "Ha! ha! ha!" 

C. — "What of your Milledgeville girl ?" 

S.— "She busted me too." 

"Well, say, S.," said G. — who seemed to have the 
inside track on matters — "how about your Virginia 
sweet-heart? How has that turned out? Miss Paul- 
ine, you know?" 

S. — "Well, boys, I'll tell you what it is, as it's all in 
the family and will not go any further, the way things 
stand now I'm busted all round. I received a letter 
from Pauline the other day which ruins my hopes 
with her." 

H. — "What's the matter there now, S. ?" 

S. — "Why, boys, you see Pauline is a proud, high- 
minded woman, raised in luxury, has had all that 
heart could wish, and however much she cares for me 
she don't like my prospects for the future. 

"You see the ministry, so far as this world's goods 
go, is not an easy life, and this is the rock which has 
scattered my hopes with Pauline. 



126 How I Got My Education. 

"I wouldn't give up my purposes and honest con- 
victions of right for the best woman in the world. 
She tells me," concluded S., "that 'she had hoped I 
would at least make mj home in Virginia, and have 
a nice little home near her parents.' But that if I 
^expected to remain in Georgia, and drag her around 
from pillar to post, that the matter is ended.' 

''I guess it is all up, for I expect to remain right 
here and fight it out on the line of duty. It will be 
all the better for me, though, as I will have nothing 
to bother me during this, my last year in college, and 
I can make good use of my time. I shall swing out 
-as free from the infl.uence of woman as a balloon a 
mile high in the etherial regions." 

As these club-mates strolled down through the cam- 
pus toward Marvin Hall, they sang — 

Roll on, calm and peaceful night, 

Complete thy round of star-lit splendor ; 

Burst the golden gates with light, 
Let richer, broader glory tend her. 

And as thy soft and piellow light 

Will not think to wane nor vanish, 
But rise to bright effulgence height. 

And never with the evening tarnish, 

So may our brightest cherished dreams 

Bud forth and bloom and blossom. 
Till each his laden vineyard gleams 

And feasts on richest fruit — Opossum ! 



How I Got My Education. 727 



CHAPTER YIII. 

FINALE. 

The snow is falling rapidly. The cold December 
winds are hurling and dashing the white flakes 
through the leafless trees of the campus oaks at 
whistling speed. 

The clouds are dark and lowering. The soft white 
fleece that covers the ground cracks and pops under 
the feet of the college student as he plods his way 
from his warm room to answer the ring of the two 
o'clock bell Friday evening. 

It is on the eve of Christmas. Some of the stu- 
dents have been from home longer since the opening 
of fall term than ever before. Three short months 
seem to them an age, while others have not darkened 
the door of the parental roof in four long years. 

Snowballs fly promiscuously, one occasionally graz- 
ing the head of a professor as he hurries toward his 
recitation-room. The merry laugh of the student 
rings out on the campus in all directions. A spirit of 
joyous, innocent rebellion pervades every heart. 

"We must have an extra holiday or we'll all run 
off," was the cry from fifty noisy voices. Two dozen 
students enter the president's office requesting per- 



128 How I Got My Education. 

mission to leave on the four o'clock train for Atlanta 

and home. The kind heart of the president is 

touched, and when the train rolls into the little station 

at Midway, twenty boys board the train for the ^''Gate 

Cityr 
It is a jolly crowd, and while it is not a boisterous, 

drinking party (for they were gentlemen) still there is 

much hilarity, mingled with wit and humor, that 

would make a passenger occasionally smile despite his 

intentions to be dignified. Dyspepsia and saturninity 

" hide out" when a score of college boys get together 

on a railroad train. 

Approaching one of the stations on the road the wit 
said : 

" We are approaching that|station whose character- 
istic productions are those caciferous and ovicular 
receptacles of gallinaceous vitality which, after pass- 
ing through a certain form of culinary art are known 
as '^hiled eggs^ Then, pulling out a handful of 
cigars, he soliloquized on this wise : 

" We will now regale ourselves with a few of the 
monocotyledonous, endogenous phenogams known 
under the technical name of nicotina tohaccum. The 
highest form resulting from the evolution of this 
plant is somewhat cylindrical m shape, slender in 
form, slightly convex at one extremity, and is recog- 
nized by its generally carrying some dude around who 
swings to one end of it." 



How 1 Got My Education, 72p 

Thus they remarked the whole way, keeping the 
car in a roar of laughter throughout the journey. 

Some of the students concluded to remain over 
during the night and take in the beautiful mud that 
had congregated itself en masse throughout the city. 

The mud was really a sight to see. Why, it was 
three miles wide, and extended from Ponce de Leon 
clear to West End, and from the cemetery to the Roll- 
ing Mills. The " beautiful snow" had filled the ground 
below, and had been ground and mixed by the wheels 
of buggies, wagons, drays, dumping carts, bicycles, 
tricycles, wheelbarrows, and by the feet of men, wo- 
men and children, horses and mules and dogs, until 
it had lost its virgin whiteness and poetic beauty. 

But mud did not keep the people from going in 
Atlanta. IN^o, everybody goes, men, women, boys, 
girls, preachers, sisters of charity, brothers of charity, 
newsboys, bootblacks, white boys, black boys, and — 
mud. 

Yes, they all go. Young ladies just tuck up their 
dresses, and pull their veils over their faces, so they 
can't see, and just go ! go ! go ! The people here are 
like Longfellow's Mad River, for , 
'* They go on forever !" 

There is a great deal to see in Atlanta about Christ- 
mas times. For instance, there is the tin horn, and 
the red wagon, and the — the mud ! and there is the 



ijo How I Got My Education, 

well-dressed man, and the man with the red nose and 
the muddy coat. 

Then, above all, and beneath all, and over all is the 
— mud ! 

Well, some of the boys concluded they could not 
take in everything in one short evening, so they would 
remain over night. 

** Where would be a good place to stay ?" asked 
several boys, including the wit and the parson. 

*' At 61 Marietta street," was the reply. 

" Yery good," said the parson ; " I may not get in 
until late, as I expect to call on a lady friend of mine, 
but 1 guess there'll be no trouble in finding the room 
where the students are stored away." 

So about.ten o'clock p. m. the wit found he had seen 
enough of the town, and coming up to the gate that 
led into a little yard in front of 61, he found it fas- 
tened. 

*' What shall I do ?" soliloquized the wit. "I can 
jump the fence, but I'm afraid of dogs." 

So he took his beaver off and laid it down care- 
fully and jumped the palings to see if the coast was 
clear. Finding everything all right and "quiet along 
the Potomac," he jumped back for his hat. He 
placed the beaver upon his head and with his supple 
limbs he lit over again with all ease ; but the beaver 
didn't follow. It lit on the same side as that from 



How I Got My Education, ijr 

which it started. Then he jumped back again, and 
placing it more tightly on his cranium, made his final 
leap and reached his room in safety. He had gradu- 
ated in gymnastics or he never would have gotten in 
at No. 61. 

But ah ! the parson — his time came next. He had 
gone a dozen blocks out Whitehall street to see his 
lady friend, and her company was so delightful that 
the hour of twelve had arrived before he thought of 
leaving. 

But bidding his lady-love good-hye^ and wishing her 
a "Happy New Year" a dozen times, he started for 61 
Marietta. But alas ! alas ! not so easily found. He 
went to the first corner and turned to the right, to the 
next corner and turned to the left, to the third corner 
and turned to the right, and thus he wandered from 
one square to another, until the lights in the dwell- 
ings began to grow scarce, but no nearer his goal than 
when he had first left his lady love's residence. 

Kound and round he went, and finally coming to a 
residence where a light glowed from the window, 
faint and weary with his unsuccessful wanderings, he 
stepped up on the portico and rang the bell. 

Several little children ran to the door and the par- 
son said — 

"Children, who lives here V 

Then the children laughed right out in his face. 



1^2 How I Got My Education. 

"Children, can you tell me the way to the Kimball 
House ?" 

Then the children laughed louder and ran back 
into the room. 

"What can this mean?" muttered the parson. 

Then a young lady came to the door and said, 

" W-e-1-1, Mr. L , where have you been ?" 

And the parson said, 

"W-e-1-1, Miss Fannie, is this your house?" 

The poor fellow had walked two miles right round 
his sweetheart's home and had called an hour later to 
know his way to the Kimball House. 

She gladly directed him to the proper street that 
would lead him down town. The parson reached the 
boarding-house safely, tripped lightly up stairs and en- 
tered a room to the right. An alto voice said, 

*' Who's that?" 

"It's one of the students. I wish to retire." 

"Well, TQtire out of here as quickly as you can — oh, 
me ! my ! oh !" 

Then turning to the left he entered another room, 
and the bass voice of some clerk said, 

" Who's that ?" 

" It's me. I'm hunting the students." 

" Well, the students are down stairs." 

Then the parson went down stairs and turned to 
the left, and a sweet little soprano voice said : 



How I Got My Education. ijj 

" Who's that ?— O !" 

" It's me. I'm hunting the students." 

" Well, they are on the other side of the hall.'' 

Then the parson turned to the right, half scared to 
death, and one of the boys says he was as white as 
a sheet, when he found the right room. 

The parson has been west since that time, but has 
never been necessitated to have his girl show him the 
way home, nor jump the fence to get in the yard, nor 
wake up all the sweet little angels at his boarding- 
house hunting the students, since that eventful night 
in the Gate City. 

Christmas day had arrived. Three o'clock Mon- 
day evening the State Road train pulled from under 
the car-shed northward. A few short stops along the 
line to allow passengers to get on and off, and I ar- 
rived at the station nearest the residence of Rosa Haw- 
thorne. 

Rosa and I had met in Atlanta during the fall and 
had made up again. I had been invited to spend 
Christmas at her home, some miles out from the Gate 
City. 

Procuring a horse and buggy at the little village 
where I left the railroad, I proceeded in the direction 
of Rosa's country home. 

It was a damp, muddy, drizzly evening. The horse 
dashed and splashed along over the red clay hills, 



ij^ How I Got My Education, 

while phantoms and visions and air-castles appeared 
and disappeared in quick succession in my busy brain. 

The evening is waning, the clouds are dark and 
heavy, the mist and fog gather close in front of the 
steaming steed. It is a time for reflection, the sun 
has hid himself behind a heavy vail of December 
clouds and mist. The flowers that would on some 
spring evening call forth delightful thoughts, are hid 
beneath the mud and snow of a dark winter day ; the 
birds that would sing a sweet song to the rolling 
wheels of a vehicle over a smooth road in summer, 
have flown to a more genial clime ; the mind is neces- 
sarily shut up to itself, memories of the past intrude 
themselves upon us, our thoughts go back over the 
past, the scenes of other days rise to the retrospective 
gaze, the sweetest and saddest memories of life steal 
in upon us, the days of our youth, the friends we 
have loved and lost, the hopes we have cherished — all 
are reviewed with the freshness of yesterday. 

It is not alone with the past that thought is engaged 
in such an hour ; it projects itself into the future, 
searching amid the years that are to come for what of 
joy or sorrow they have in store for us. "Alas ! we 
have here no abiding home, the sands beneath our 
feet are constantly washed by the inflowing tide of 
ceaseless years ; soon, and inevitably the objects of 
our affections shall be taken from us, or we be taken 



How I Got My Education. ij^ 

from them." How shall we successfully meet the re- 
sponsibilities that await us ? What steps are neces- 
sary to carry forward the schemes which minister 
<jomfort in the line of duty ? These are the questions 
which imperatively demand consideration. 

Kosa had invited me to enjoy the hospitalities of 
her happy home, made more happy on this special 
occasion by a delightful Christmas party. 

The prospects for the future with Kosa must now 
be decided. The day for our happy union must be 
fixed and proper steps taken for its consummation. 

Years have gone by since I first left home, and but 
one visit made to the parental roof in all that time ; 
and to graduate six months hence, marry, and go back 
to Virginia with a sweet bride, would be the crowning 
period of my life. 

Will time throw no shadow over these bright 
dreams? God only knows! 

On the foaming steed pushes ; the white-capped 
peaks of the Blue Ridge, in the far Northwestern 
portion of Georgia, are dimly seen above the fog that 
settles low to the cold, damp earth. 

A mile in the distance is a lovely country residence, 
situated on a considerable eminence, skirted by a 
winding stream that steals down from the mountains 
of North Georgia. Hill after hill, forest after forest 
rise beyond and are lost in the unbroken chain of 



Ij6 How I Got My Education. 

circling mountains. An orchard, a well filled barn 
and cribs, together with the residence before men- 
tioned, crown the eminence which overlooks the sur- 
rounding country. 

The dark shadows are fast gathering ; the big log 
fires begin to send forth their light from country 
dwellings as I pass them in quick succession ; the 
light in the jjarlor on the hill shines with an inviting 
gleam. 

Carriages and buggies dash up and unload their 
contents until soon the house is all astir with the 
happy voices of cheerful men and maidens. 

Music and merry song and innocent games and an 
elegant supper wore this Christmas evening away 
into the short hours. A few hurried sentences from 
Rosa, amid the buzz and the stir of the evening, re- 
vealed to my anxious heart the desired fact that all 
was well. 

" Rosa, but six short months intervene between 
this and the glad day of my graduation, and our happy 
marriage. With what I have made and saved through 
economy from my expenses in college, I feel justified 
in starting out on the delightful sea of matrimony. 
Soon my college expenses will no longer drain my 
treasury, and to enter upon my mission in life with 
such a companion as you, will prove, indeed, a mission 
of love." 



How I Got My Education. ij^ 

" All your joys and sorrows it will be the delight of 
my life to share. My prayer is that nothing may in- 
tervene to thwart onr purpose and becloud the bright 
days of our future." 

With such an assurance, the day or two at Rosa's 
country home, away from books and college classes^ 
was delightfully enjoyed. 

Back again at the railroad, a few hours' ride, with 
one change of cars, and the train blows for Coving- 
ton. 

It is the silent hour of midnight. Nothing can be 
heard about the quiet village of Oxford but the 
familiar bark of the cur as he marks the returning- 
student steal in from his Christmas dissipations. 

A myriad sparkling worlds have marshaled in the 
deep firmament above. The white snow has all gone 
except here and there a white spot, reminding one of 
a picnic in a grove with the table cloths spread under 
the broad oaks. 

I enter the portico of Marvin Hail, thrust my hand 
into a letter box containing the accumulated mail^ 
strike a match and find a half dozen letters awaiting 
my arrival. I enter my room, and those known to be 
business letters are hurriedly opened and the contents 
quickly noted. 

There remains one small, white envelope neatly ad- 
dressed in a lady's hand. 



ij8 How I Got My Education. 

" This will be a treat, I know," I remarked to my- 
self, recognizing my sister's writing on the superscrip- 
tion. I tore it open and began reading. 

But alas ! alas ! The old year may hold in its em- 
brace the happiest heart that ever fluttered in a 
human breast ! and the new year sing the sad requiem 
over the departed hopes of one's brightest and most 
cherished imaginations. 

" M , Dec. — , 188 . 

^* Dear Brother : 

" This morning the sun rose beautifully upon our 
peaceful and happy home; to-night it sinks to rest 
upon its smouldering and crumbling ruins! * * * 

Your affectionate sister, 

Fannie." 

Oh, God ! my home ! the home of my youth, with 
its sweet clustering memories — my home all in ashes ! 

Alas! Whatever may be our home, rudely or taste- 
fully constructed ; whether it be the humble hut or 
the stately mansion, with marble steps and gilded 
halls, and spacious apartments hung with richest tap- 
estry, in the quiet of the country or in the bustle of 
the crowded city, we build and garnish, knowing that 
it is doomed to loss or to decay. 

Unnumbered forces work its destruction. The 
crackling flames may devour it, the tornado may scat- 
ter it to the winds, the earthquake may upheave it to 



How I Got My Education. ijn 

its foundations, the slow, tedious attritions of years 
may crumble ic to the dust ; an unforeseen calamity 
may wrench it from our grasp, still the loss (come 
when or how it may) to us can never be computed. 

It was something more than so much brick and 
mortar and timber. It was the center of a thousand 
hallowed recollections. From basement to garret 
there was not a room or a spot but was dear to mem- 
ory, because of the associations that clustered about it. 

Perhaps it was the old homestead of the family, 
or perchance the purchase of hard-earned money by 
some emigrant who went out West. But no matter 
for that. It has a hold upon our affections, and if our 
life has been spent there, we can scarely look back to 
it except through tears. 

A host of shadowy recollections crowd upon us, 
some bright, some sad. Our infancy may have been 
hushed to rest beneath its roof by the loving voice of 
a tender mother. 

The joys and grief of childhood, the hopes of 
budding manhood or womanhood are inseparably con- 
nected with its enclosures. Beneath the blooming 
trellis at the door, when the moonbeams crept through 
the mantling vines, the vows of love were breathed. 

A thousand memories are awakened by the retro- 
spective gaze, each in turn making the thoughts of 
home more sacred. 



i/j-O How I Got My Education. 

The wreck comes — a financial disaster, a fire, the 
corroding touch of time, and what is the loss ? A 
stranger comforts us with these words, "It is a trifle ; 
it can easily be replaced." Never, never ! He knows 
not how much more than that which is seen has been 
hopelessly shivered or lies buried beneath the smoul- 
dering ruins. A more elegant mansion may grow up 
in the place of the old ; more beautiful and tasteful 
grounds may be planned ; the birds may come back 
in the springtime as of yore and build their nests un- 
der the roof ; others may admire it ; but to us it is not 
the home in which we were born and reared ; the asso- 
ciations are gone, the spell is broken, the charm is 
lost. We are strangers beneath our own roof. 

Such were my thoughts as I stood speechless and in 
tears, with this little note in my cold fingers. 

But this was not all. A voice of duty speaks 
again — 

"What have you ever done for your parents?" 

"Not much, if anything." 

"Is not this a time to help ?" 

The heart could but answer, "Yes !" 

Then comes a struggle. How can I leave my class 
whom I love so much, and forego the pleasure of 
graduating with them ? They never seemed half so 
dear to me before. We have been together several 
years ; our hopes and our prospects for the future are 



How I Got My Education, i^i 

to a great degree bound together, and now the voice 
of duty says these pleasant associations must now 
come to an end. The future which but a moment ago 
seemed so bright, is now all dark and unproductive of 
the happiness I had expected. 

Eighteen months must ot necessity pass now before 
my graduation day, and the other pleasant expecta- 
tions realized. 

Still another thought comes dashing into the already 
fevered brain. When I tell Rosa that [ shall leave 
college and go out to repair the damages of the 
flames, will she agree to wait ? Ah ! me ! this would 
have been a time to have said, 

"I'll not finish my education, the road is too rough." 

But thank God, a little voice whispered through 
the darkness and broke the stillness of this silent mid- 
night hour, in words like these, 

Though every joy may foam 

On the bosom, of many years, 
Still never a foam brings a brave bark home — 

It reaches the haven through tears. 

And through tears and sorrow I saw into the future — 
a light falling on the path of duty, that gave me cour- 
asre to sacrifice the little buds which seemed to be 
just about to open into the full blown flower ol per- 
fect happiness. 

Kind Providence always designs rightly and well 



/^ How I Got My Education. 

for his children when they obey His will, and let 
come what may, one is always safe in placing his hand 
in God's and being led by him through the rough 
places in life. I carried the matter to Him and next 
morning, while my heart was still sad at the thoughts 
of my parents' inconvenience caused by this untimely 
calamity, my mind was made up as to the right course 
to pursue. 

''I will leave college and go out to talk my way 
over a book and help repair damages, let the conse- 
quences be as they may." 

I indited a short note to ^osa, telling her of the 
necessity of leaving college, and asking her to allow 
me to postpone our marriage a year longer than we 
had expected. I trembled with anxiety in waiting for 
a reply to this request. 

In the meantime 1 made the necessary arrange- 
ments for leaving, sold my large arm rocking chair, 
student's lamp, bedstead and bed clothes, table and 
cover, carpet and curtains, and began to say good-bye. 

It was one of the trying hours of my life. " Good- 
b}e Harry and George, Ed. and Bartow, Will 
and Carvey, farewell all ! I had expected to 
have the pleasure of going to Atlanta to have our 
pictures taken, but I'll not be there! I had almost 
made my engagement for the senior party, but I'll be 
far away when that delightful occasion takes place. 



Hozv I Got My Education. i/fj 

" Good-bye Rosa. If you refuse to wait — well, I 
must go." 

Will I be successful financially, finish my course, 
claim the hand of Rosa Hawthorne, and go home on a 
visit to see my loved ones, as I had so recently fancied 
I would ? 

A letter from New York city making me general 
agent for Hitchcock's Analysis, my trunk packed, a 
short sympathetic note from Rosa saying that no such 
trivial affair as a little time should come between us 
and separate us forever ; a few hurried good-byes and 
I was off on the road again. 

The first place I stopped was at Savannah. Fifteen 
hundred dollars worth of books sold and delivered 
there in ninety days, and I moved further south ; 
Brunswick, St.' Simon's Island, and Darien, were no 
less productive of 8ucce83. 

Much of pleasure may be mixed up with a business 
like this, that amply repays one for all the rebuffs he 
may receive from the rough and uncouth. 

It was while in Brunswick, that I enjoyed the de- 
lightful pleasure of a fishing party which will haunt 
me with pleasant memories when the trials of hoolc 
agencies will have been forgotten. 

One beautiful May morning, just as the sun marked 
out a sparkling belt of glittering gold as he tinged 
each ripple of the water in his path from the wharf 



i^^ How I Got My Education, 

eastward, and the gentle zephyrs fanned from the 
brow the pestiferous "sand-fly gnat,'' two ladies and 
two gentlemen, one of the latter being myself, stepped 
aboard a little " gull," and turning its bow towards the 
Island of St. Simon's, we shot like a silver fish over 
the rippling tide as sweetly and as gently as an infant's 
breath. 

But an hoar's ride, and we had left the busy city 
far behind us, buried in the thick foliage of the water 
oak and elm, trimmed in their long, lacy robes of gray 
moss. 

I had heard much of the rolling deep, and of ** gath- 
ering up shells by the sea shore," but not till then, on 
that glad day, did I realize what it was to stroll for 
miles along the singing, rolling, ever restless tide, on 
the solid white sand, washed and rolled and lashed into 
snowy whiteness by the coming and the going of these 
untiring waves. 

As I sat on an old battered boat, drifted and half- 
buried in the sand, and looked as far as the eye could 
reach at the white-capped waves as they rose and fell, 
and heard the deep-toned bass of this grand music, 1 
read another chapter from the book of nature in 
which I saw more plainly than ever the sentence, 
*' There is a God !" 

God has revealed himself in every leaf and fruit 
and flower and grain of sand and drop of water, and 



How I Got My Education. i/f.^ 

towering mountain and stretching valley, and winding 
etream and sparkling sunbeam and twinkling star ; but 
nowhere does " nature's God" speak so loudly and so 
plainly as in the ceaseless, billowing deep ! 

Back to Brunswick, business completed, and off to 
the '^ vine-clad hills" of Yaldosta and Quitman. Here 
is where the watermillions and "cukes" grow. 

When the mosquitoes and the rays of the Southern 
sun became too numerous, I sought the hills of North 
Georgia. Washington, Sparta, Athens and other 
places successfully canvassed, and autumn comes 
again. The Northeastern railroad, leading out from 
Athens, stops at Tallulah Falls. Why not visit this 
delightful place and study the beauties of nature in- 
stead of relying entirely on text-books and history ? 

The last days of beautiful September are quietly 
stealing away, penciling the leaves of the forest oak 
with their autumnal brush. The hazy Indiari veil 
drapes itself in blue and purple folds along the sides 
of the mountain slopes with a fairy-like delicateness. 
Forest after forest, mountain peak after mountain 
peak rise and are lost in the blue distance beyond ! 
The engine puffs and blows up the steep grade, leav- 
ing the plains and valleys far below. At midnight the 
Air-Line train halts for a moment, trembles as its 
mighty pulse throbs and beats, and an Emory College 



I/J.6 How 1 Got My Education. 

student lands high and dry in the lovely little city of 
Toccoa. 

In such a climate as this one '^draws the drapery of 
his couch about him and lies down to pleasant dreams" 
without the interruptions of either sand-fly or mos- 
quito. 

Day dawns. The sun rises and gilds the mountain 
peaks with a thousand variegated hues ! The soft 
zephyrs steal up from the mountain gorges and whis- 
per a sweet song to the opening autumnal day. 

We leave the little city of Toccoa and gradually 
descend for a mile to the valley that lies beneath the 
overhanging precipice. We steal quietly up through 
the densely shaded glen, lighted only by the soft 
morning light that filters through the autumn leaves 
of the forest oak. 

How easily one breathes in such an atmosphere 1 
How subdued and reverential are the feelings as one 
approaches such divine architecture that is so soon to 
be revealed to the anxious eye ! Ho ! what music is 
this we hear as it is borne away on the mountain 
breeze ? 

Eternal architect ! Thou hast clothed this mountain- 
bride with a flowing veil of sparkling water. Above, 
it hangs for a moment, rippling over the face of the 
mighty rock, then unfolds and drapes itself at the 
foot in clouds of mist and silvery spray. 



How I Got My Education. i^'^ 

Toccoa is the beautiful bride adorned for her hus- 
band, standing in the mountain gorge, singing her 
sweet song as she awaits the approach of her husband. 
But, alas ! Tallulah, though only sixteen miles distant, 
never approaches nearer. 

1 ascended to the top, toak off my shoes and waded 
out into the center of the stream where the beautiful 
Indian maiden stood for the last time on earth. As I 
peeped over the mighty precipice this sweet song 
floated back from the murmuring waters below, and 
the eoul experienced that deep and exquisite sense of 
the beautiful which is reserved tor such moments to 
be enjoyed : 

Beautiful brook ! when the moonlight's gleam 
Glistens upon thy falling stream, 
And the varied tints of thy rainbow vie 
With the brightest hues of the evening sky, 
The woodland elf and the merry fay 
Chat on thy banks their roundelay ; 
And with fairy sword and tiny spear 
Fight o'er their bloodless battles here 
The drowsy bird from its leafy nook 
Peers on the whole with anxious look 
And the cricket uplifteth its cheerful voice 
And the bats at the merry sound rejoice, 
And the fairy troop on their sylvan green, 
Frolic and dance in the moonlight's sheen. 

Who would not leave Ambition's dream 
To linger here by the crystal stream ? 
Or turn him from Fame's trumpet call 
To the softer sound of thy waterfall, 



i/j,8 How I Got My Education. 

And free from the toils and pangs of strife 
Pass the glad hours of his peaceful life ? 
Nature no fairer knights doth rear 
Than those which gladden the vision here ; 
And never yet did sunlight shine 
On sweeter vale and plain than thine. 

Beautiful streamlet ! onward glide, 
In thy destined course to the ocean's tide ! 
So youth impetuous longs to be 
Tossed on the waves of manhood's sea; 
But weary soon of the cload and blast, 
Sighs for the haven its bark hath past : 
And though thou rushest now with glee, 
By hill and plain to seek the sea, 
No lovelier spot again thou' It find 
Than that thou leavest here behind ; 
Where hill and rock "rebound the call" 
Of clear Toccoa's waterfall ! 

As 1 turned and rode away from this incarnation of 
the beautiful, my soul, silent and speechless, could 
but unconsciously whisper "There is a God !" 

Back to the city of Toccoa and then on to Tallu- 
lah. Arriving there, dinner over, a long walking stick 
in hand, and I began to descend downward^ and 
down and down I went for about a thousand feet! 

The water's edge is reached and one is instantly 
struck with the contrast between this^and the beauti- 
ful Toccoa. Here is experienced the deepest sense of 
grandeur ! What a wild, weird look lurks about the 
dark craggy granite and the white foaming waters ! 
How the stream boils and seethes and lashes its im- 



How I Got My Education. i^n 

penetrable bed, as it leaps from one precipice to an- 
other ! 

The hand of nature has turned its course and for- 
ever shut it in between the towering walls of this 
''Grand Chasm." The sound that reaches the ear of 
the tourist from some eminence like the Devil's Pul- 
pit, is a deep, solemn requiem-like music. 

One is awed into silence and deep reverence, such 
as the heart could seldom feel under any other circum- 
stances, as he stands in the presence of ''Tempestu- 
ous/' "Hurricane" and "Oceana," and looks up whence 
they make their mighty leap, then far above and be- 
yond, block after block of dark granite is piled till it 
rears its august head almost out of sight. 

These falls must be seen to be appreciated. JSTo 
writer's pen or j^ainter's brush can portray to the eye 
or mind what God has revealed in this, his mighty 
handiwork. 

It is dangerous to visit a bar-room before starting 
out on this journey, for steady nerves and strong mus- 
cles are required to visit the different points of inter- 
est along the edge of the chasm, or to scramble down 
its steep and rugged face to behold the mad strug- 
gles of the troubled river: 

A mountain torrent I have seen, 

Where skies are bright and woods are green ; 

A mountain river, rushing on 

Betwixt eternal walls of stone, 



J^o How I Got My Education. 

Down in a deep and dark abyss, 
Bedded with rock and precipice ; 
Now, flowing with a sullen course 
And uttering murmurs loud and hoarse, 
Now, plunging with resistless tide 
Adown a precipice's side ; 
Enwrapped in snowy foam and spray 
It thunders on its headlong way, 
Till mingled with the flood below 
It there resumes its wonted flow. 
Again, and yet again it leaps 
From base to base — down rocky steeps ; 
Rending the air with ceaseless roar, 
Swelled by loud echoes from each shore ; 
Beauty and grandeur there combine 
And o'er the varied landscape shine, 
There are a thousand charms displayed 
Of rock and stream and hill and glade. 
Tallulah claims the poet's lay, 
This humble tribute song I pay. 

Leaving Tallulah I found myself back at Athens, 
preparatory to starting for South Georgia, as had 
only six more months in college, my presence was not 
needed there till spring term. 

So coming by Oxford to say '' how d'ye do" and 
good-bye to the old students who had returned, up by 
Atlanta to get the first-honor man of my class to make 
an agent out of him, and off to the land of ** water- 
millions," "cukes," and mosquitoes, and sand-flies 
again. 

Albany is canvassed with equal success, the towns 
and cities of the " Land of Flowers" are invaded and 



How I Got My Education, i^i 

stormed. Christmas has rolled round again, the year's 
work has been one of success ; just thirty months 
have been spent as book agent ; twelve months before 
starting to college, two vacations, three months each, 
and the last twelve months making just thirty months, 
and eleven thousand dollars worth of Hitchcock's 
Analysis have been sold and delivered by this '' special 
agent." 

Thank God for success ! Thank kind Providence 
for the generous spirit of the Southern man who 
stoops to help a college student in securing his educa- 
tion, though it be accomplished in the by-ways and 
hedges, talking over a book ! Thank heaven for the 
sweet encouragement received at the hands of the 
noble women of this sunny land ! Thanks to Rosa 
for her patience in my absence ! Not a murmur nor 
complaint escaped her sweet lips while I struggled to 
accomplish the desires and purposes for which I left 
college. But six months remain now till graduation 
day, and then the matrimonial ties will bind us to- 
gether. 

Text-books are again resumed ; the regular duties 
of a college life are met with renewed energy and 
ambition. How thankful should a heart be with 
whom heaven has dealt so kindly ! A college course 
nearly completed ; not a dollar unpaid ; two little 
cottages in the ** Gate City" rented out ; some funds 



j^2 How I Got My Education. 

in the bank, and all made and saved from being a 
Special Agent ! 

A short note reaches me from the little village of 

L . Indeed, it is the familar hand of Pauline 

Frestine ! What's up ? 

'' Mr. and Mrs. A. S. Prestine request your pres- 
ence at the marriage of their daughter Pauline to 
Ernest Hastings, Tuesday evening, April — , 188 , 
at 8 o'clock. L , Yirginia." 

If I had time I would go to see Pauline married ; 
but business of a similar nature is soon to claim my 
attention, and an expected visit to the land of my 
youth will bring me into Pauline's presence time 
enough to wish her a long and happy life, any way. 
So, I just sent my compliments, with an orange blos- 
som to twine in her brown hair on the eventful even- 
ing of her happily mated wedding. 

Pauline had taken a trip from home, on the beauti- 
ful James, and had unexpectedly met her happy fate. 
Ernest Hastings was a gentleman of fine family, 
elegant home, and a prosperous mercantile business. 
He was intelligent, of noble disposition and very 
handsome. He was, indeed, such a character as Pau- 
line had dreamed of, and she was equally attractive. 
Thus it was — a summer, an autumn, a winter — and 
spring brings the orange blossoms that twine her 
bridal wreath. 



How I Got My Education. j^j 

Well ! well ! A eheep-skin costs ten dollars, license 
one and a half dollars ; which will bring the most 
happiness? Better buy both and secure all. 

The rolling wheels of a two-horse phaeton go sing- 
ing over the beautiful clay road, through the country, 
which leads to the residence on the hill, out from the 
Gate City. The '* Special Agent" and the President 
of Emory College sit back in the softly-cushioned ve- 
hicle and listen to the songs of the mocking-bird as 
he carols his sweet notes on a bright summer day. 

It is one o'clock p. m. Rosa and I stand at the 
hymenial altar. A few solemn words, some life-long 
vows, a few hurried good-byes, and ofi to our Blue 
Ridge home to spend the summer with loved ones 
among the grand old mountains that skirt the beauti- 
ful valley of Virginia. 

" Well, Jack," said Pauline, as we met in the little 

village of L , " if you and Rosa are as happy as 

Ernest and I are, long be your life, and strong be the 
ties that bind you together ; to you two I give this 
mountain laurel hlossom. When it fades, may others 
of a different character crown your happy brows. 

Well, whether I shall spend my life in Georgia or 
Virginia, in the mountains or by the seashore, it will 



jj^ How I Got My Education. 

ever remain fresh in my memory, How I got my edu- 

CATIONJ 

Lovingly yours, 

"The Special Agent." 



THE END. 



